253
by KingUnderTheHill123321
Summary: Following the destruction and abandonment of Earth, the Autobots and Decepticons have divvied up Cybertron's solar system and now remain isolated from each other. Both factions struggle to adapt to the immense weight of change. When everything is lost... what can be gained? (UPDATE COMING SOON!)
1. End

**A **little bit past nighttime, but also somewhat bright. The atmosphere was not bright, but the illumination that was oddly protruding into the gray metal streets came from a synthetic source... unquestionably artificial, but served its rudimentary purpose of providing a means of sight. It certainly performed its task admirably, but it was proceeded almost lazily; it seemed to be constructed and now toiling out of meaningless purpose rather than meaningful purposelessness. It was something - just like everything else on Cybertron. It was filled with _somethings, someones, somewhen's, somewhy's_, and other things. The vague existences that diversified Cybertronian life (if it could be called that, loosely) were just as emptily hollow as the rest of the degenerate, drifting wisps of planetary cosmos. Perhaps that's why the silver cuboid street lamps flashed every so often with an invigorating yellow beam of light. They were trying to fill someone else. They were trying to fill something with purpose.

"Nutty crap," Arcee remarked, idly swatting away a tiny flying wheel that earnestly attempted to scratch through her outer sheathing. "Just pick up the Energon Arcee, pick up the Energon..." she reminded herself. Her blue paint job streamlined by silver alloy covered her body before this task, which was now bathed in all sorts of inter-galactic junk.

Arcee's thoughts were not lost however. Even if she was completely alone in an ovular intersection road, growing irritated from the repeatedly dull _clang _of her admittedly slender foot as it furiously pounded the frail alloy beneath it, at least the F.L.I.D had taken notice. The First Laboratory Investigative Device had indeed endeavored to burrow its fat spherical body into her much larger knee sprocket, but Arcee took this rather as a sign that Energon was becoming more scarce rather than the ridiculous notion that the idiotic automaton had decided to _investigate _(she chuckled heartily) her various philosophical proclivities.

"Scrap... scrap... scrap..."

She lamented it, but if she was to be frank with herself, scrounging for spare resources in the middle of a rarely used freeway in extremely myopic conditions was stupidity taken to an unnecessary extreme. The inky dust-fog that had partitioned itself throughout I-Omega was relishing the consequences of its birthing. Arcee could not identify her own metallic phalanges, much less some half-dead bot buried in the middle of nowhere, probably accompanied by another stupid horde of F.L.I.D's.

"Oh, you know, I tried to bite into this fembot's leg today," Arcee mocked, adjusting her voice transmitter to emit a high-pitched, frustratingly squealing form. She pushed aside some more garbage in her so-far fruitless pursuit, feeling revoltingly green liquid seep out from the cracks in the debris, as well as a host of microorganisms pleased to betray their shallow homes.

"I like to eat a lot, because even though I have a small body, I just can't wait but – Umph!"

In her enthusiastic verbal diatribe against the troublesome F.L.I.D, Arcee had failed to observe a massive steel bar blocking her usual gait. The _crunch _of her much smaller ankle sprocket could be heard as it forcefully smashed into the sternly unforgiving coldness of solid alloy. Arcee, never the most expressive (at least in a positive manner) of Autobots, scrunched her hard features together before finally feeling Cybertron's powerful gravity twist her down into the ground... although she didn't feel her head collide painfully just yet. Instead, she felt a sinking sensation drown her stomach tank as her spatial gears struggled to cope with the unexpected change in direction. After perhaps four solid seconds of silent descent, she finally felt her cranium connect agonizingly with an irregularly shaped object.

"Fuck..." she gasped, sitting up immediately and swiveling her thin arm around to gingerly caress her now swollen head. Light touches, even with her small fingers, yielded bursts of severe discomfort. She rotated her upper torso around, glimpsing with a brief expression of precarious animosity the site of the collision. A minuscule hexagon, clad in fibrous spokes, lay triumphantly beneath her. She gyrated her now warm head sideways, noticing a dimly-lit cyborg clearly devoid of Energon repeat itself with a low-pitched speech.

"Hello! Welcome to Interworld Omega! This is a major crossroads for many a Cyber - "

Arcee pushed herself off the grimy ground and hauled her heaving head with both hands.

"Hello!..."

She brushed off some unkempt soot from her stained elbow.

"Hello!..."

She moved to joyously bring her foot down heavily on the hexagon, savoring the resounding _crunch_.

"Hello!..."

"Shut the fuck up."

Arcee however, had recognized something whilst cleaning her elbow that was almost immediately astonishing. Moving quickly, she hopped across a particularly hazardous heap of garbage before firmly crouching down to see two cylindrical capsules shining with light blue liquid. She shifted her shoulder slightly forward, activating the blue paneling that bent outward to reveal a bright white light. The light shone strongly on the larger capsule, highlighting the rusted label.

**RADIOACTIVE ENERGON. ALL PURPOSE.**

"Yes." Arcee victoriously whispered. Two short swipes with her blue claws later, the small capsule found its way into her rugged hands. A few more swipes and both containers were evenly balanced in her palm. She hoisted herself to her feet, clattering her gears in ominous anticipation as the dangerously positioned cylinders wobbled carelessly, rocking back and forth in cyclic torture to Arcee.

"Don't fucking fall, don't fucking fall..." she whispered congenially to the containers, fully aware that she was mouthing expletive-laden command phrases to inanimate objects ignorant of their easily achievable, premature demises.

"All right then," she stated, "time to head off."

With a tremendous effort, she carefully held the containers close to her midsection as the rest of her automated body began the process of transformation. Her torso minimized into a perfectly triangular head, her bottom torso elegantly snapped together and twisted inwards to form the rear of the motorcycle, and finally, the torso spun 360 degrees into its seat mode, as Arcee quickly threw the composite seat belts over the two containers and tightened the fastening securely.

"Hello!..."

Arcee winked at the broken bot with a devilish veracity.

"And... goodbye!"

A burst of speed. The gas pedal had been pressed, or rather stomped, and the blue motorcycle was now bursting across the freeway at an incredible speed. To Arcee, the feeling of accelerating into oblivion was a unique sensation that was built upon by repeated experiences of thrill-seeking. Of course, Optimus had always been quick to note her numerous loose-cannon flaws, but she had never been one to seriously consider the Commander's words. In fact, the more she struggled to think about Optimus' commands, the more she became fully aware of how boring it was, to hear him drone on and on, seemingly with no voice box malfunction, either lauding the values of Cybertronian idealism or perhaps another instance of scolding Bumblebee's rash actions. She would receive the calm but stern speech as well, but her audio receptors stood in defiant refusal rather than placated reception.

The sky was darkening with a vapid aspiration, and the short field of view that Arcee had previously possessed (admittedly still quite limiting) was shortening quickly. The tall alloyed structures that encircled her in a false show of security were absent... nothing pervaded her distanced travel except the darkness of heavy fog. In any case, her navigation system would make quick work of the terrain, but she would have hoped for more visibility in such horrible conditions. With Bumblebee still struggling with his newest spark chamber injury, she felt she had been more obligated to acquire such an arduous task of procuring Energon rather than do it willingly. Cybertron lay eaten and ravaged from centuries of continuous abuse; and, if she attempted to portray honesty, she never envisioned herself returning back here. Of course, the moral instinct and loyalist attitudes sprang up at once in supercilious theatrics, but every so often she could close her optical drives and just keep remembering, drifting into memories and strolling across vivid feelings, skating across a frozen lake of suppressed thoughts.

_Memories_. _Past. Over. Gone..._

Just large enough to eclipse the nearly invisible delineation of blue horizon, a building was propped up. It slanted disproportionately sideways, so that the struggling streak of luminescence, spewed by nearby street lamps, sweeped across the structure's jagged exterior. The light bounced off of poorly-cut edges and circled deep fissures that cluttered the craggy exterior. So far, Arcee had felt nothing but a cautious antipathy towards its strange aesthetics. Certainly the circumstances of its erection were dire in nature, but still, the way the cascading gleam leaped from nook to nook, sprinted between cornering terrain made the Autobot Base exude a horrible appearance. The blue light selectively wafted through different portions of the building, giving it a degenerate, almost destroyed disposition. Admittedly, in a sea of identical gray towers it seemed a sort of ghastly refresher, but the interest it spawned was borne out of instinctive fear rather than fascination.

She throttled a bit more. The towering structures to her sides were blurring to a much grander degree; whole former hotels and residences being distorted into a fish-eye lens of random gray shapes. The "Blue Base" (as it was shortly dubbed) expanded and grew, as with every second Arcee sped faster, the Base swelled up like a giant, living Spark.

It was very soon then, when she felt herself screech to a gradual stop, bits of galactic dust, fiery and now awake, flew out from beneath the jet-black tires. She relaxed her lower torso. Intuitively, her legs twisted outwards and armor plating slipped through gaps and began to swathe her knees and thighs. In response, her torso rotated inward, seat belts still held tight against the smooth surface of the blue capsules, as she fully transformed her chest inward and the redundant _clinks _and _clanks _of armor retrofitting itself onto a living metalloid fell on deaf ears.

"Scrap," she denoted, unbuckling the seat belts and gently grasping the containers with both hands. It was radioactive Energon of course, which would require a laborious medical treatment procedure for purification. Ratchet was never too keen on this, so she fully expected a justified request for help, most probably from Arcee herself.

The gate, to her slight discontent, remained firmly pressed against the leaden ground. The silver surface remained as worn as ever. Gigantic support bars dotted its sides.

She was sure of it, a covert note had definitely been sent to Wheeljack's office concerning the specifics of the time of her departure and return, but in traditional "Wheel-Jackian" fashion, the note had surely found its way to its grave, discarded without even a brief reading. It might be sagacious to attempt another communicative stance, but it was the recharging period: Bulkhead would not man the Gate for at least another two cycles or so. For brevity's sake, she mulled briefly over remaining outside, but the auspicious nature of her surroundings, thickly still, and implacably symmetric, was unnerving. Skipping over a nearby boulder, she lightly pressed her silver fingers to the edge of the surface.

"Arcee. I.D Number 23949. Returning from Energon scouting."

At best, she had hoped for a vague glittering flash before a green panel would crawl its way out of the solid metal, but no such event occurred.

"Arcee. Requesting immediate entry."

Silver, but no green.

"Arcee. Request permission to recharge so I can finally rest for five fucking minutes."

The silver spray coating groaned as Cybertron's slight tectonic plates shifted to adjust the massive gravitational pull.

Unfortunately, the fail safes were presumably also nonoperational. Her first biased assessment pinned uniform blame on Wheeljack's numerous technological failures, but further analysis made her double back. True, he was responsible for a whole lot more than Gate activation. True, it was a certain period of time that entailed no mandatory help whatsoever. And true, the finished product of ten cycles of continuous recharging was a further delay of two cycles before the guard bots shook their heads out of slumber and eliminated drowsiness. However, she had overlooked a key detail: the Energon capsules. They were not Autobots, they could not autonomously stand upright and demand entry into a private, hidden base. They did, however, possess the incredible power of persuasion. Arcee pinched the ends of blue capsules where the ringed placeholder lay idly, bumping it delicately against the grayed surface.

A din, certainly not a mere sound, screeched in thunderous approval. The Gate's entrenched bottom pushed upwards with an enormous leverage. Rubble and fragments of metal work fell limply to the ground. The creaking noise was nearly unbearably, but the enervating sight of watching a 40 ton "door" defy the laws of Cybertronian physics was pleasing. Just at the very top of the ascension, the screeching waves paused mid-air, gradually fading away into static noise. Arcee was always moderately stunned by the gaping chasm that appeared shortly after the Gate revealed the interior of the Base. A long hallway proceeded to fill her vision, flanked by functioning Energon lamps that gleamed with neutral light... perhaps one of the last remaining sources of truly white light on Cybertron.

Tightly wrapping the capsules around her back via seat belts, she briskly jaunted into the hallway. She had, at most, 20 seconds before it would automatically close and resume its deep trance. The _clangs _that followed her were no longer present; her foot now made contact with special alloy that produced no sound once touched. Optimus had specified it himself, stating various goals of surreptitiousness, secrecy, among other things. Nevertheless, the privacy was enchanting. And on cue, the expected _creaking _of closure erupted from behind her, rattling the capsule strongly enough to make Arcee adjust the seat belts more tightly. She was making her way to the right corner of the room, a bland white space that seemed unremarkable at first glance. It bore no distinguishing marks to separate itself from the rest of the white walls, but years of continuous usage of its "features" had driven Arcee to consider its purpose almost subconsciously. She covered the distance in fifteen nanocycles, and began pressing the perpendicular edges in five. A rumbling noise could be audibly detected, and systematically, the rest of the white lamps began to flicker out and depower... in contrast to the corner Arcee was occupying, which was shining fiercely. The walls collapsed inwards, surrounding Arcee and increasing the pressure locally. The top sealed itself off. She turned to look at her feet, noting their lateral movements apart as the floor methodically split in half, tearing away at her foothold and eventually, her standing area. She closed her optical drives for this next part, as the swishing noises of tube dynamics and pressurized air whizzed past her head, sometimes inspiring fear, and at other times, curiosity. The rapid fall slowed a little, and her feet found solid ground once again.

"Bitch."

Arcee craned her neck sideways to again glance at the capsules, which remained obediently strapped to her back. The white room was now part of her memory core; now, she stood in a much more confusing area. Pathways littered the massive open space she currently resided in. The white light was still here, but doted out in far smaller quantities; bits of it breathing life into signs overlooking the branching pathways, and others positioned just above her head. She completely disregarded the bulky figure, a massively lopsided form livid with rage, shuffling in front of her.

"Easy," she acquiesced, privately reasoning that she hated awakening mid-recharge. "I didn't expect anyone to hear." She grinned widely at the figure. "Especially not _you_, Bulkhead."

Bulkhead scratched at his deformed green temple impatiently. "The Shoot makes a hell of a sound coming down," he defended. "But Primus' luck, only I got up. Had to walk a bit, but I probably need it anyway..." Bulkhead rubbed at his bulging midsection, sides decorated with white burn marks.

"Why do they call it the 'Shoot' anyway?" she probed, easing her way past Bulkhead's irritated state with a certain degree of trepidation. "It doesn't shoot you anywhere. It transports a bot from point A to point B, via a tube."

"Yeah," the green Autobot scorned, snorting slightly but habitually with his large, overlapping jaw. His teeth unveiled their hideous forms to Arcee, who recoiled a bit. "Go tell Boss Bot that."

Arcee felt her neuron drive clatter inside of her head with confounding astonishment.

"He's... still awake?" she asked, perplexed.

"Last time I checked, yeah," Bulkhead responded, shifting around his huge backside and turning it to face Arcee. He ignored her poorly suppressed giggle, but his fading steps made Arcee feel unexpectedly affected.

"Wait," she called out, earning his bemusement as he turned around. "want to just stay and chat a while?"

Bulkhead grunted a bit violently. He took his best shot at verbalizing an expletive, but clearly lost energy and drive mid-proclamation and resumed his normal pace towards the left-most pathway. The glowing letters "Recharging Stations" dotted the sign hung above the entryway.

Arcee chuckled, but promptly frowned. She wasn't exactly sure why she chose to conceal her discovery of new Energon from Bulkhead, and the fact that she had indirectly assured herself of its safety whilst talking to him was disheartening. He had seen her, surely, glancing at her back midway through talking. But she had relied on Bulkhead's fatigued processor and his current annoyance level to spare her from further questioning, or even worse, compliments. In actuality, she was never the prominent bot for Energon scouting - usually, that task would fall to Bumblebee or Sideswipe. But Optimus had informed of her task in a different manner. His breath was hushed, his voice emitter resonated with a quiet, urgent whisper, and the request came from pleading retinal sensors.

She headed for the middle corridor, overseen by the words "Watchtower Lookout". She knew he would be there. Maybe by choice or by procedural habit, but the Commander, when in emotional turmoil or philosophical thoughts, would retreat to the relative solitude of the Watchtower.

She halted her steps before stepping into the archway. Vague, flashing images of Chicago burning, Autobot ships flying, and people... _people_ could be remembered. A dull _whirr _in her left elbow motor commenced as she tilted her forearm up and down, visualizing a Spark feebly beeping on and off.

She crushed her hand. Painful sensations from metalloid fibers arose at once, but it could not compare to... _now_. So she would ignore it. Just as she had always done.

**. . .**

"Just a bit more Starscream..."

A perpetual silence erupted.

"STARSCREAM!"

The three-story tall Transformer struggled to his feet.

"What now?" he asked. "_Master_." The last word was inflected with a bitter, sarcastic mockery.

Megatron brushed an uneasy hand shakily over his dull features. His normally red-eyed glare was growing dimmer now, the constant indignation being thrown his way tiring him fully.

"Starscream," the Decepticon repeated with emphasis, "This boulder is far too large for me to shoulder alone."

Starscream huffed and placed his hip motor lazily on the support beam. Even if the local mines had been toiling to scour for spare spaceships, he knew fully fell that this particular mine was utterly useless. Its interior was bland and crack-worthy, and so far he had noticed no breaking of structure, no diversion in the rubble, and no giant spaceship buried away in this wretched asteroid.

"It's not here you stupid moron," Starscream bluntly suggested. "This whole damn cave is filled with nothing but fecal matter!"

Megatron blinked his optical drives twice, once for the insult, and twice for the unusual substance Starscream claimed was _in _here.

"Shit you fool! Actual shit in this hole!"

"Starscream..." Megatron advised, relenting to finally separate himself from the massive rock blocking his path to another unexplored tunnel. "The ancients used these tunnels for centuries... often as transport. We would most certainly find something or another in here - "

"That's what you've been saying for the last ten solar cycles!" the angrily purple fighter plane raged. "That's what you'll _keep _saying for the next thousand!"

The older Decepticon scratched the back of his chiseled dome as light dust began to accumulate on top of his head. The inner biology of this cave was... disgusting, to say the least. At least the others had a lone streak of fire burning in a corner. Or perhaps, they possessed a quiet solace. Here, only dark brown walls and a rugged floor bumped into the two Decepticons, fueling their mutual discontent. Their _was _a glowing entrance above them, but the cavity was too far away to provide any artifical hope anyway.

"There were times," Megatron reunified, "when I had more respect coming my way." The last two words were punctuated strongly, and eloquently elongated.

"I'll try and find someone who can cry for you," Starscream retorted, before stomping off into a local corner and resuming his power-cycle. The again-free snoring engine began to rumble.

Megatron watched Starscream's heaving midsection with a blank expression. At first, he grappled with the notion of disrupting the huge stone from its delicate equilibrium and gleefully follow its heavy walk towards himself. First it would crush his legs, tear through his hip flexor, then finally squish his oblong Spark with a phenomenal concision. He wouldn't even be conscious by the time it greeted his frontal lobe. And what a spectacular greeting that would be...

Then another more primal sentiment seized him. This feeling was fiery and controlling, willing to conquer and kill.

"_Master, please... enough... I will follow their ship the next time Master! I will! I promise!"_

_The whimpering bot fell silent as another spike was thrusted forcefully through his knee servo, as a distant "squelch" was audible. A scream was attempted, but the silence proved to be far more formidable._

"_I want you to learn Starscream..." the gruff voice commanded, casting a massive, jagged shadow over the squealing robot. "I want you to know the manifestation of consequence..."_

_A second spike's piercing propulsion followed. No yelling was attempted. _

"_I... I..." the bot repetitively stated, his voice box clearly jamming from overuse._

"_There is no 'I' Starscream," the voice corrected, almost patronizingly. _

_The wailing bot's head quivered._

"_... only me."_

_Squelch._

He laughed a bit. Just before he was laboriously explaining to Starscream that the boulder was too large to be moved alone, and then he had stupidly made plans to shift it on top of himself in a dramatic statement. Now... he could only think of more _squelching_. Bad ideas, negative thoughts, and overall depression in general was far more common (more common than he would like), an effect preceded by a lack of authority. Megatron shivered from the thought of returning back to Home Net with yet another disappointing report. His metallic surface protested immediately, the strain of continuous physical labor desensitizing the motors and draining the Spark. For now, this pathway would remain as mysterious as he had discovered it. Lugging Starscream back to Home Net was a worthy cause, and a goal that would certainly leave him with enough shame to last him an eon.

"Starscream," Megatron drowsily communicated, "off your rear port. We're going back."

The heaving stomach quelled for a moment. Starscream anxiously sat up.

"Great!"

Megatron scoffed privately at the ridiculous affirmation. "Transform, and rise - "

"Shut up," Starscream cut him off.

With a fleeting glimpse at the frustrated, larger Decepticon, Starscream bent his neck preternaturally backwards, collapsing it into his back. His lower half combined together and rolled into each other, swiveling majestically into his torso, which had by now folded inwards. A pointed fighter plane cockpit reared its head from the front portion of the chest, and the now fully-formed military aircraft displaced sand and intergalactic dust as it rose sharply into the air with a booming echo. It zoomed into the glowing cavity, eventually fading out of sight.

Megatron, put off by his former 2nd in Command's leading behavior, leaped into the air. His legs, in contrast to Starscream, split apart and joined his arms. The combined force found its way into the sides of his chest, which was quickly lengthening itself. His head was swarmed by a plethora of glass shielding, which smoothly fell over the radius of his cranium's range of motion. His form, of course, was still true to Cybertronian specifications. Following Starscream, (he almost vomited at the thought) he burst upward, reaching and surpassing the golden entry.

The golden hue was merely a facade however, as the overwhelming darkness rotated around him almost instantaneously. He looked backwards, observing with relish as the cave grew smaller and smaller until it was rendered completely nonexistent. Eventually he saw the rest of the burrowed caves vanish. Frontward, the silky form of Starscream was still racing upwards. He had not quite adjusted to the odd gravitational situation quite yet... several times he had to institute it into his memory core that proceeding upwards lead to the Home Net, while proceeding downwards led to the Mines. They were both asteroids, of course, but while Home Net was snugly stuffed into the topmost asteroid, the Mines were crammed into the bottom-most asteroid. One was for luxury, while the other again inspired projectile gagging.

Looking sideways, Megatron saw exactly what he expected to see, but it irked him nonetheless. A dull gray sphere, distant but shining adamantly, rotated endlessly.

_Cybertron..._

How miserable was it, he thought, that he lay so close to his home, his true _home_, only to relive a never-ending exile status on these two, bloated pieces of floating garbage. The asteroid he resided in was merely a fraction of Cybertron's impressive size, and its population 3 times greater... and twice as stupid.

Starscream increased his speed a little, and Megatron adjusted to fit his query. The central entry to Home Net was more visible now, with the numerous gray craters spanning the entirety of Home Net's asteroid residence practically visually announcing their presence. Entry was loose terminology at best. To be more accurate, it resembled a giant hole... pushed right through the center of the asteroid. In the asteroid, where he knew branching homes, supply ways, and entire civilizations lived, he knew he had one more _chance_. One more chance to talk about...

"Pay attention old man."

Megatron wished he could shoot Starscream out of space right then and there. If only his plasma cannon was operational...

Soon, the surrounding rock formations that comprised the interior of Home Net eclipsed their flight, and now the circular view of the Asteroid containing the Mines was shrinking behind them. Blurring homes and rough societies passed by in a visual dance of nebulous, monochromatic color. Starscreeam veered off to the right, and Megatron followed suit, although justifying it as instinct rather than obedience. He had returned back to the Docking Station numerous times... with numerous failed reports. Starscream reversed his transformation process and landed squarely on both feet on an elevated rock formation. A bustling crowd of bots below him ignored this arrival completely. Megatron landed right next to Starscream, also reversing the transformation process.

"We should probably clean this up more..." Starscream noted, observing the rich stalactite formation and pointed rock jettisons dotting both the rock floor and ceiling. It was a cave as well, but it was a brown space littered with hurrying Decepticons, rushed movement, overlapping noises, and a fiendish aura of complete confusion.

"Hold on..." Megatron started, pushing Starscream aside and bending over the edge of their elevated platform.

"FELLOW DECEPTICONS!"

Starscream let out a brutal chortle as the crowd continued to produce a constant, unrecognizable conversation noise. The topmost tubing in Megatron's crown throbbed painfully.

"DECEPTICONS!"

The crowd below Megatron unanimously silenced their idle chatter before rhythmically turning their heads of all shapes and sizes to gawk at the distant Decepticon. Megatron, startled by the unforseen but rapt attention given, took several seconds to carefully organize his thoughts. Some remote bleating arose underneath the elevated rock, pressuring its speaker far more.

"I am known for giving this oratory method often - " Megatron began.

"Fuck off old man!"

"Shut the hell up!"

"Kick your own rear drive Mister!"

"Bollocks!"

"Where is the spaceship?"

Several stones whizzed at Megatron, who in his temporary trance-like state induced by the varied insults utilized by the crowd, failed to notice them collide fruitfully with his head. Sparks clashed as the rocks chipped off the worn metal exterior.

"I wasn't able to - "

A brief pause. Stones gradually drifted downwards and generously landed on Megatron's feet rather than his skull. Relieved at the show of mercy, the tall Decepticon re-energized and muttered a clearly restrained honesty.

"... procure any spaceships."

This was a mistake however, as repeated _thunks _followed as the rocks soared back to life, clashing with Megatron's browed ridge and nasal drive. Blue Energon seamlessly dripped downward, spattering the cold floor with dashes of watery artwork.

"Please... we must go back to Cybertron... we must - "

A significant portion of the crowd guffawed derisively.

"You always say that!"

"We can't leave our homes back here!"

"Trying to take back Cybertron is suicide!"

Megatron was now profusely drained of Energon, collapsing to his knees and coughing bitterly. Another stream of Energon poured from his lower lip.

"Please! Listen to me for just one moment!"

The stones still chipped away. Starscream's retreating footsteps could be heard.

"Just one moment... that is all - "

The stones continued to fall, perhaps chipping away at something far more valuable than metal armor.

**. . .**

As she strolled noiselessly through the brilliantly shining corridor, Arcee took the time to gingerly stroke the amber walls flanking her, soak in the aromatic texture of the comfortingly soft microfiber supporting her walk, and earnestly search for Optimus Prime. The elevator that transported to the Watchtower was only fifteen steps away, but each pace closer shook her with temporal unease. Optimus' reserved disposition did nothing to help the matter... far too often she had, while conversing with him, strived to see him laugh. The chief trouble was, however, that regardless of the well-executed puns she would toss his way, subtle innuendos and occasionally even the odd toilet humor, his silvery complexion never once changed. It remained static and rigid, forever locked in a blank state of complete neutrality... a stupid limbo state.

The elevator had approached rather too quickly for her to finish her thoughts, but she nevertheless strained to tear the two interlocked metal doors away from each other. Stepping in, she turned around and found the moldy control panel. Only one destination was labeled, and her finger rapidly depressed the matching button. A surging movement shifted upwards, and her spatial gears adjusted to fit the gravitational launch skyward. Arcee idly twiddled her thumbs while rocking back and forth, making sure to avoid physical contact with the rest of the horrid transport system. Some things, such as Bulkhead's empty but putrid snacks was all together tolerable (at least after shutting down one's central processor). Other bits, such as rusting F.L.I.D's, Ratchet's bloodstained tools forgotten permanently on the floor, and a peculiar mossy yellow stain covering half of the back wall was more gag-worthy.

The elevator slowed to a complete stop. Arcee witnessed her query just fifty strides away from her. Thankful to exit, she made as much an effort as possible to loudly jaunt all the way to the Commander's presence. This meeting in particular felt more light-hearted. The elevation of the Tower was in the pathway of a flowing breeze wading through, and the temperature had cooled to a sufficient degree. The top floor itself was spare in ornamentation, seldom for the blue and red Autobot perched on top of one of the peaks directly above the Gate.

"Yes?"

Optimus turned to face her. Arcee was again disappointed to see the face plate covering his lower features, and his breaths coming out in controlled, but highly unvaried tones.

"You could have opened the Gate for me," Arcee sarcastically indicated, motioning for Optimus to slide over ten feet so she could also sit down. He hesitated at first, but felt pressured to commit to her request. "I was freezing."

"Hmmm..." he broke off, staring at the two distant asteroids. "I see."

"Um... no, you didn't. Well, not me at least."

It was overly hopeful, perhaps even childish, to expect even a half-hearted grin. Optimus echoed her presumptions, giving no response whatsoever.

"You should stop staring at them, you know," she scooted a bit closer to his massive torso. She grapsed the side of his aged head and forced it to face her. "They're just asteroids."

"Yes... they are."

"Do you want to be alone?"

Optimus sighed vastly, the transparent chest windows stretching under the tension of drawing breath. His red forearms waved a bit dramatically in the air.

"I - " he waved his forearms again, in an awkward circling manner. " - have no preference in the matter."

"Fuck!"

Arcee jumped as another F.L.I.D had unsuccessfully rammed itself into her already tender knee sprocket. Her fingers retracted inwards, and a golden razor shot outwards... and directly into the estimated Spark Chamber of the F.L.I.D. The buzzing fat body powered down immediately.

"Language, Arcee..." Optimus wearily groaned.

"Right, right..." she lied, ignoring his plea unabashedly.

She hummed an old melody for a while, taking chances randomly to look at him, with his knees still hanging limply over the fort's perch, his lower legs dangling whilst his upper body curved inward. His back was sloped oddly, and had lost the strong posture it had once possessed. He seemed to almost be crushing himself inward, deliberately trying to squish himself into a ball.

"What's this?" he broke the silence, extending his comparatively much larger finger to poke Arcee's neck, although the tip pointed upward at the back of her head.

"Oh, that?" she asked, bemused. "I just fell on some stupid thing while getting... THIS!"

She felt she proclaimed it too loudly, but was excited like a giddy school girl attending her first day in the Autobot Academy. Whipping out the dual Energon flasks, she proudly extended them both to Optimus. He eyed the dancing liquid for a moment.

"Keep it."

She narrowed her eyes at him, his slumped posture starting to annoy her.

"You asked me to get it for you."

"For the general welfare of the Autobot community," he reprimanded.

"Same shit."

His head drooped downwards. She snickered a bit.

"How about this?" she proposed, eyeing his disinterested features with careful patience. "I stop swearing, and you stop moping."

"I, I - "

His random pronouns were something at least. Arcee nudged him with her elbow, the soft metal clinking as it only minutely shifted the much larger frame.

"We are running low Arcee..."

Arcee sniffed, adjusting herself so her small hands wound itself tightly around her body.

"Everybody knows that Optimus," she warned. "It's not a surprise."

"No, I mean..." he looked at her with musing retinas. "We are _always _running low."

"Things have... well, _moved on _Optimus. Changed. Our life is... well, malleable now."

He snorted.

"And what did it used to be?"

She observed him quietly. His back was straighter and the posture for positioned for her, but this attention was for a reason that she loathed.

"I won't lie..." she began, earning at long last, a half-hearted chuckle from his still-covered lower mouth. "It was a _lot _better."

"Remember the daily drives with Sam?" Optimus invited Arcee to remember, "Usually he would go with Bumblebee. On some days when his schooling was complete or college or whatever education institution he was attending... he would ride with me. Him and his romantic partner... I can't recall her name."

"First it was Mikaela," Arcee informed. "Then it was Carly."

"Yes... yes... sometimes I could watch them for hours on end, engaging in random, childish acts, running across to hug each other, watching sunsets, people, other humans..."

Arcee felt her throat's sensitive lining tighen, and by the looks of it, Optimus' was too.

"Optimus..." she begged. "Thinking of memories is stupid."

"Then why do we keep them?" he countered, almost in a demanding gaze. "Why do _I _keep them?"

She honestly felt she had no answer to supply.

"Chicago and Earth are behind you now... behind _us _now," she reminded him. "Cybertron is what we have _now_. Don't you want to make the best of what we have _now_?"

"And what do we have now?" he again fired back, his normally steady pitch becoming alarmingly deeper. "Reduced to hungry scavengers? Looking through garbage..."

"Technically, I looked, not you..."

Optimus closed his eyes, clearly annoyed.

"I had several duties to perform so that prevented me from successfully aiding you in - "

"Yeah, yeah, no worries Boss Bot."

Arcee looked at his his square face again. His lower jaw plating was beginning to seem highly unnecessary.

"Why do you keep your old Earth form?" she gently inquired. "All of us have switched out by now."

"Because," he began solemly. "this form," he stuck a silver finger to his rimmed torso.

"What?" she pressed on.

"It keeps me close to _them_. To Earth. To the past."

She looked at her knees, desperate for an escape route.

"Before..."

"That's enough," she cut him off. "You've said quite a mouthful."

And he complied. The wind was slowing down again, so the former chilling breeze was leaving the two Autobots and thus, tiring their joy and emotional resilience. Uncannily, the distant asteroids brightened a bit. The full night atmosphere had set in... inky black fog shrouded their sight, surrounding them in a tent of pure blindness. Optimus kept staring catatonically at the distant asteroids, to Arcee's slight disdain.

"Reminds me of the Moon... if it was split in half..."

"Lower your face plate," she commanded, "you look old with the face plate on."

Surprisingly, the lower hinged metal sunk in. The grayed features were only partly tarnished. They had lost their former luster, but the carved definition was still there. So Arcee clung onto that hope.

"Can I sit here with you, or do you want me back inside?" she repeated from her previous request.

Optimus slumped once again, tilted his massive head downwards, and let his blue spiked antennas vibrate idly against the frosty weather. He placed his hands on his knees, admiring his lower legs dangling carelessly over the edge of the top of the Gate.

"If you can, please do."

Ideally, she would have pushed further and open him up significantly more, but her neural processors instinctively guided her. That would be tomorrow's job. For now, she would sit with him. He would most likely not return to his dormitory until early morning, when every bot would have finished recharging, but that was fine with her. She would stay as long as he would. She did not need to hold his hand, stroke his face consolingly, or even offer verbal comfort. She knew that her presence lightened him. That was enough.

It was amusing really. It was humorous to note how in the infinite pursuit of thoughts large and rough, that Cybertronian philosophers had missed out on the incalculable value of the small and the soft.

* * *

**A/N**

**Hello! I always thought the Transformers Universe deserves a nice, allegorical and "deep" representation of realistic life... for robots that could walk and talk. This would mean actually picturing what would happen to an entire society of autonomous robots that actually live out life! How would it be structured? How emotional will it be? How will the drama be created? All of this is explored in the fic... at least, I have plans to!**

**This is mostly likely to be a really _loooooooooong _fic, with a sustained, slow-burning narrative (although I'll mix in a nice blend of action as well), deep character relationships, and mature themes. Nothing excessively graphic or salacious, but certainly I'll touch upon more complex themes that can only be explored under the "M" rating!**

**If you've read any of my previous stories, you'll know that I will modify a lot to fit my reader's suggestions! So R/R, review, and enjoy the fic!**

**~Frax (cool pseudonym)**

**P.S: If you do choose to give feedback... How's the chapter length? Style? Anything to improve? General suggestions? Anything at all? LOL :) **


	2. Tomorrow

**D**aybreak occurred approximately once every thirty-three deca-cycles on Cybertron. Night time typically lasted for a full twelve deca-cycles. As a whole, the "dead" planet was far more imbalanced time-wise than its significantly more radiant spiritual successor, Earth. The quick transitions from frigid murkiness to scorching heat exhausted newcomers, and even the locals surviving on Cybertron's titanic continents found it difficult to switch between living and recharging so frequently.

Optimus was no exception. His body was balanced precariously on the stable edge built on the top-most end of the Gate. His shining blue legs swung restlessly back and forth, banging often with the Gate's stiff varnishing. The windowed chest cut across by splotches of faded red hue rhythmically contracted and expanded. The bright sunlight that shone from Cybertron's distant star (at the later stage of its life) collapsed on the two interconnected Autobots, diverging and splurging all throughout their bodies. Both robots' reflective portions gleamed richly in the yellow, purifying warmth.

What was truly hilarious (for a silent observer, glimpsing probably 50 feet away) was that Optimus' usually dignified, somber countenance was completely reversed. In sharp contrast to his upright stance, the _de facto _Commander of the Autobots lay hunched over, dwarfing the small blue robot surely crushed beneath him. A jolting _whirring _pulsated from within his voice box, rumbling with anticipation. To describe it as "snoring" would be an improper statement... Optimus would certainly think so.

Brilliant blue retinas flickered weakly open.

"Arcee..."

Optimus's slack-jawed expression (although he was unaware of it) loosened with relief.

"Geroff..."

Optimus chuckled lightly and blinked twice. He let his heavy head droop downward and gazed fixedly at the blue dome spanning his vision.

"Geroff..."

He sniffled and wobbled the blue dome in a rocking fashion. He tried to communicate with it.

"Hello?"

"Get the fuck off of me!"

Optimus' tight, etched manner fractured like an decrepit jet exhaust port. Slowly, the tactical and imaginative mind fluttered back to working condition as he tenderly lifted his enormous arms off the quaking blue dome... and the rest of whatever was attached limply to it. He blankly stared ahead of himself as Arcee arose, rubbing her head furiously.

_Thump. _

Unfortunately, the motor skill required to remain poised perfectly on top of a comparatively narrow metal framework proved to be too grueling for a still-drowsy Optimus, who promptly fell painfully on his wire-framed back. He made several attempts to elevate himself by thrusting downward with both elbow joints, but capitulated to his lethargic motors immediately.

"So when they say you're a heavy sleeper..."

Optimus grinned widely as Arcee loomed over him. She _appeared _to be "looming" from his angled perspective, which was an unusual role reversal for him.

"I am not, I assure you," he retorted, disgusted by the poorly-concealed "awakening" slur smudging his voice, "Just heavy."

"Whatever," she casually scoffed, extending a small hand towards his right arm, still planted on the floor. Optimus's browed ridges expressed doubt in the purest form, but Arcee's steady fingers and concentrated focus convinced him. Gripping it tightly with his thick digits, Optimus delicately shrugged his arm downward, unexpectedly feeling a reciprocal force greater than his own haul him to his feet. He took a moment to hunch himself over and adjust to the replenished flow of Energon seep into his central processor.

"You really are aging," she teased, gently slapping the small of his back with a fierce but quick hit.

"And you still have not ceased your incessant profanity."

Optimus watched Arcee laugh with disdain, obviously realizing her earlier livid demand.

"It's my _thing_, Boss-Bot," she remarked, "It's a stress reliever."

She poked the center of his red chest, causing a slight smidgen of discomfort to arise for Optimus, who spent the entire night tragically abusing his chest framework due to his slouched slumber.

"_You _should try it sometime."

"No thank you," Optimus responded, "But I do appreciate your ridiculous offer."

"Well... what time is it?"

Optimus opened his mouth to answer, but Arcee was already faced away from him, surveying the passing acidic vapor formations sailing across the brown sky. Another one of her annoying habits, he reasoned, was particularly this frustrating procedure of asking a question that she did not expect an answer to. This instance was more justifiable however. The gaseous shapes traveling across the horizon mingled with the wavy streaks of light that tore through their puffy shells. The illumination provided was neither uplifting nor dismal – instead, it made Optimus shudder internally, and linger over perpetual unease.

_Drifting..._

"Optimus?"

He evidently forgot to look back at her timely enough to avoid arousing carefully-concocted suspicion.

"We have to tell the others," he suddenly affirmed, "is your Energon still in good fashion?"

Arcee fumbled behind her back for a while, before producing the two elusive capsules that had amazingly resisted a full recharge-cycle's worth of possible damage. He would have liked to credit this to his protective arms, but he knew the specific positioning was purely borne out of luck.

"Come," he bid the smaller blue Autobot, who strolled behind him. His first plan formulated for the day was to request Ratchet to examine his auditory faculties, as he could have sworn hearing a discrete groan emerging from Arcee as they stepped into the elevator.

**. . .**

"And a bottle of oil!"

"Packets of more nuts!"

"Energon!"

"Crap!"

"And then he said - "

"Buckets of junk n' garbage with a side of - "

The rest of the words were drowned out by the overpowering noise competing for Autobot attention. As Optimus had predicted, relaying the information about the secured Energon yielded many results. As an effective organizational system for responsibly dividing up supplies was not in place yet, Ratchet had re-purposed his gruff, objective medical voice to be inflected with an even higher amplitude than usual. The booming power carried far, far enough to stir Autobots from late recharge-cycles and spur the quick sharing of local supplies. Ratchet himself stood on a slightly elevated pedestal, whilst cupping his blocky fingers around his mouth. Shouting commands and orders to willing Autobots, the medical automaton had relentlessly been attacking his voice box for the past few cycles or so.

"Prime!"

Optimus heard the subverted distress buried underneath the logical pitch, and so hurriedly shoved Autobots out of his way to hone in on his target. As he towered above most he had encountered, this proved to be a simple task.

"Yes?" he shouted, noting Ratchet's descent from his higher platform.

"We need to go inside a private bunker!"

"Correct Doctor!"

Although disappointed to re-tread the exact same path he just forged, Optimus restrained his disappointed expression and again made short work of the smaller robots in front of him. Strong but pitifully stout Ratchet had significantly more trouble, receiving random knicks to the head gear as elbows, arms, and shoulders servos carelessly batted him around. It was only four nano-cycles worth of torment however, as Optimus shimmied down a nearby slope and into the specified location. He paused briefly, observing Ratchet slide roughly downward and enter the rectangular structure. Optimus snapped the metal doors shut.

"Insane... the whole lot of them," Ratchet protested, fiercely waving his arms around. Optimus smiled as Ratchet's thin mouth curved madly downward, nasal cavities flaring in anger.

"We need to organize our supplies better," Optimus suggested, "We cannot expect our fellow Autobots to behave cordially if the resources are so scarce... or the circumstances so dire."

"But madly all rushing in and trying to take as much as possible?" Ratchet questioned.

"Perhaps that is the only way it can be done for now, old friend."

Ratchet swiveled lightly towards Optimus, adjusting his large-framed spectacles to they sat comfortably on the bridge of his cuboid nose rather than the tip.

"Can you believe their crap?" Ratchet genuinely asked.

"I can," Optimus muttered, "And you should - "

He broke off. His argumentative conversation with the aged medic bot had temporarily distracted him from examining Ratchet's heath. In a show of immense irony, Ratchet was surviving with poor fitness. His visual sensors were deprived of Energon and were blinking alarmingly, while his oral gears audibly made ghastly noises as the jaw servo moved. Admittedly, Cybertronian oxygen levels had faded the previously red-white color infused with clear lightning bolt insignias, but it was _not _responsible for the numerous scratches, rusted portions, and blatantly rotten aspects adorning his armor. The lack of intelligence frightened Optimus. Or rather, it was not the absence of intelligence, but rather the diminishing, draining vortex Ratchet's mind had surely been through. The same intuitive wit and sharp tongue still remained, albeit greatly reduced and irreparably damaged.

"How long has it been," Optimus moved closer to scrutinize his doctor, "since you partook in the sharing process yourself, old friend?"

Optimus believed that the usage of his almost-forgotten friendly greeting terminology would reinvigorate the downtrodden Autobot. It worked momentarily.

"I - " Ratchet began, closing his visual sensors in a concentrated motion, " - probably very little time."

"Lies," Optimus softly whispered, "To this date, I have never seen you claim something for yourself."

Ratchet turned his head down and shuffled his red feet in a circular movement.

"You probably scrounged for spare supplies occasionally to keep yoursef functioning..."

The medic bot cleared his voice box abruptly, almost pleadingly.

"...Barely."

"What - " Ratchet huffed, swallowing runaway fluid rushing through his throat, "What – why are you doing this to me?"

Optimus attempted to speak before being cut off.

"You never used to be this way..."

'None of us are the same way," Optimus interrupted, feeling frustration welling up in the pit of his stomach cavity, "We're all deformed versions of ourselves."

"Cynicism," Ratchet pointed out, "with your name, sounds stupid."

Optimus chortled. Outside, Autobots trampled each other to acquire supplies, powerful footsteps echoing through the small bunker. Ratchet, hearing the same annoying clatter, walked briskly to the two metal doors and clamped them shut. Optimus coughed as a portion of liquid accumulated in his oral cavity.

"Want me to look at that?" Ratchet stated.

Optimus cleared his throat and pinched his throat lining. A sore sensation was developing, but he chose to veil this from Ratchet.

"I have to go," Optimus asserted, "Take this."

He tapped the outside of his right thigh and a minuscule compartment peeked out. Two shimmering gray packets lay motionless inside the rectangular box, and he promptly clenched both. Bringing them up to Ratchet's retinal level, he paused for several seconds before Ratchet understood and extended his open palm. Optimus dropped both packets into the rough hands. He turned around.

"Start to eat more old friend," Optimus urged, "This will restore your color, but they're not especially flavorful. Scrapped together from old nuts and low oil."

"Food is food," Ratchet argued, "And... thank you."

"It's not weak to try to enjoy yourself."

Optimus tore the two metal doors open, leaving them open in the distant wish that Ratchet would notice the yellow light pouring in. He came to the brown cliff and lengthened his stride to adjust to the change in slope. In a few short cycles, he had reached the top of the small mound. The crowd surrounding the pile of supplies (which no longer existed, spare for some broken servos and odd gears) was gone. One or two Autobots were rolling over each other to seize a large triangular container, but they quickly dispersed after seeing Optimus' grave expression.

The entire Base was silent. The courtyard where supplies typically were distributed was adorned with four tall gray walls connected to a dirt floor. The acid rain would occasionally descend through the ceiling-less Base and burn off the tender Autobot coating, but luckily today contained pleasant weather. Optimus bent down near the pile and twirled the triangular object in his hands for a while.

"Boss Bot."

Optimus turned around slowly. He knew by the higher pitched tone it was certainly not Ratchet. In fact, the nickname usage and slight static shadowing the voice served as distinctive markers to any Autobot, who would instantly recognize the mellow calling of Bumblebee.

"Yes?" he replied, noting with confusion Bumblebee's exaggerated paint job. The yellow and black highlights still streaked the metallic body, but red flames now ran jaggedly over the chest. "What is that?"

"A gift from Wheeljack," Bumblebee iterated, "I have to tell you something."

"Go on," Optimus encouraged.

"We found a new signal."

Optimus took some time to process this, flaring his nostrils dangerously.

"Where is it located?" Optimus pressed, shaking Bumblebee's shoulders vigorously.

"Um," Bumblebee blabbered, the pressure encircling his shoulders rendering discomfort, "It was on I-Alpha. About two nanoclicks from the center. About 270 degrees."

Optimus took some time to register this. The specificity of Bumblebee's directions and his anxious request had aroused some suspicion, but he had, regardless of the cynicism Ratchet was critiquing, an undefinable credulity in the scrappy young bot's work ethic. Of course his more inattentive and rash actions would occasionally seep into surface, but he could not exactly explicate why his attuning into Bumblebee's vast stories would be so numerous. No matter what the yellow bot tried, the vocal processor never seemed to lie.

Optimus released Bumblebee's quivering shoulders and rotated painfully as his hip flexor protested. He rolled his arms backward to collapse into his back. Bumblebee, perplexed, attempted to speak.

"Commander!"

The blue legs twisted outwards and folded in on themselves.

"Do you need any help to go with you?"

The silver torso gyrated inwards and squished into a compact box.

"Wait for a second Commander!"

His head crushed inside his chest before shooting out next to the engine.

"We don't know what exactly it is!"

Optimus initiated his engine. A short rumbling noise proceeded. Slowly, the truck began to pick up speed, the tires pushing through the dirt and displacing chunks of floor. Dust clouds formed behind him, shrouding Bumblebee from sight. The yellow bot grew smaller as Optimus accelerated away, heading for the large hole in the Courtyard walls to his left. As the hole expanded in size, Optimus revved up the dual cylinders and felt himself float off the ground for two cycles before rotating to face the approaching ground. He was not worried. He had leaped from the second floor of the Autobot Base to the ground many times before. Even the formidable Gate swiftly moved beneath his tires as he forced himself off the metal finishing. The shock of landing arrived painfully, but it was quickly neutralized by the huge absorbers stocked underneath the black tires.

The Autobot Base was fading quickly. The recurrent blue aura began to once again swathe its misty presence around the Base's sharp corners. Gradually, the blue mist faded into a hze, then a blurb, then nothing. Optimus engaged his navigation system so that I-Alpha appeared on his on-screen display seated in the driver-side window.

_Idiot._

He made a mistake by not requesting back up. He could have alternatively chosen Arcee, or Ratchet, or perhaps even Bumblebee himself to accompany him on his long drive. Some blurring rock formations to his sides provided a fleeting comfort, but the destination was quickly approaching. I-Alpha, merely 300 nanoclicks from the Base, proved to be especially more difficult to discover. Buried deep within aged mineral forests overtaken by a combination of Cybertronian technology, I-Alpha was every bit as secretive and burrowed away as Optimus would like to believe. Of course it was a mythical place, but the probability of discovering such a distinct energy source was.. refreshing, to say the least. The blurring rocks no longer appeared, replaced by a dense jungle of towering structures. Six black tires skidded to a halt.

Optimus' motor cylinder whizzed in excitement as the blinking green dot intensified. A dusty purple sign, embossed with the Autobot logo, shone colorful letters.

**I-Alpha. Intersection 44. Junction E.**

His lower body contracted inward and pushed simultaneously through his chest. The dual windowed torso jettisoned on top of blue legs, quickly sprouting an oblong face.

"Coordinates."

Optimus had expected his navigation system to struggle with the process of adapting to new terrain. He had traversed I-Alpha before, except this was a lone venture, prefaced by an unusual circumstance. Not to mention, Junction E lay in uncharted territory: pinned right in the middle of an unusual system of caves. These were not ordinary brown rock formations… rather, they were constructed out of the metal shells of discarded Autobot scout ships. The blinking green dot buzzed wildly as he rotated 360 degrees, aiming to pinpoint the exact location.

_Beep._

He paused mid-rotation. The direction he was currently facing led straight into the center of the wrecked ships. Unfortunately, this path was incredibly hazardous - pointed spikes were pierced randomly throughout his "walkway", and the crusty ships stretched across the horizon were jolting and hissing. The weight of an Autobot ship (even a low-level scout) would usually require the muscular efforts of twelve sturdy Autobots to move. Therefore, if it so happened that any debris detached itself, Optimus' body would not be found. He would remain crushed underneath a gargantuan metal casket, buried in his eternal coffin for eons.

_Beep._

"Damn."

Optimus felt his hands quiver as he shifted his shoulder upwards. A red light, weakened from continuous disuse, shot out of an overlapping compartment. The light draped over the pathway aided him… only a little.

"Marker. Optimus Prime. Just outside I-Alpha, Junction E." His marker would be found, but his chassis would not.

Slowly, he walked forward. The spikes were easy to avoid, as they stuck out prominently and were laced with blue Energon sparkling at their pointed tips. The decayed bodies were more of a problem… sadly, the diseases that could thrive on a dead Autobot's decayed matter were as numerous as they were toxic. They, along with the spiked shoots, formed a nearly impregnable barrier. Optimus's agility reduced the tension, but only by so much.

He watched a small hole in a nearby body seep with blue Energon. He thought revoltingly of the spikes.

The rusted summits now were directly above Optimus' antennas. They could sense an impending fall, and he would be granted three seconds to dodge out of the way of the catastrophic downfall. This was difficult to visualize however, as the ships' large surface area rendered escape improbable. He was relieved then, to pass by the first four ships in a relatively stable fashion. Creaking and moaning came from above his head, but this constant fear was natural: in any case, he would admit himself to a profound bit of superstition… if anything terrible were to occur, he would know.

The walkway brought him to the steps of a small mound of garbage. It was only comparatively small when considering the grand size of the scout vehicles, for it towered several megastories above Optimus' head. It was stacked weight-wise, as per Cybertronian automatic physics. Large pistons and broken shields formed the base, while fine sprockets and bits of bolts lined the top. It resembled an Earth structure, but he felt his processor numb into static as he could not remember the specific name…

The green blinking dot was beating with an anxious compulsion. Spare generator or not, the signal that being emitted was undeniably powerful. Optimus skipped over two more rusted chassis' and leaped a third before unthinkingly plunging his hands into the center of the garbage pile. His sensory panel moaned in bitter protest; sloppy liquid gushed forward and drenched Optimus' midsection, furnishing it with a brand new moss paint finish. He was never one to lose his mental faculties over disgust, but the liquid was oozing in a highly undignified manner, wrapping around the thin depressions in his torso and filling the spaces with a pungent odor.

"Shit…" he groaned, afterward realizing Arcee's negative influence on him.

Rumbling. Moving. Silence.

He ignored the first two sounds, assuming quickly that the same scouts were misbehaving above him, but this clattering actually had physical effects: most notably, his foothold began to collapse. His antennas screamed with a fierce, piercing beeping. With his hands now graciously removing the weight bearing portions of the base, the heap of trash was left balancing itself on three flimsy spoked wheels. Optimus could see them just across his now trapped hands, methodically cracking. With a mad animation, he leaned his entire body backwards and tugged powerfully at his forearms, which were aching from the compounded tension. His hands did not move.

_Crack_.

He alternated to utilizing his legs, jumping lightly to place both feet next to his fingers. More pushing ensued.

_Crack_.

His legs were tiring. His spine tilted downwards and mushed into the floor of cosmic waste.

_Crack_.

Anguish. Desperation. Optimus tore at his arms, thrusting them up.

"NO!"

_Thud._

His antennas returned to silence. His arms were restricted, but so was the rest of his body. The immense, squashing pressure was relieved, but now a more uniform, consistent suffocation was beginning to take hold. According to his visual input, the total brightness of his surroundings (or rather, what was surrounding _him_) had reached total zero. He could not even fumble in the darkness, arms cramped far away from the rest of his body. His chest was compressing gradually. Eventually the overwhelming stream of confinement would break through his ribbed plating, crush the inner protective servos, and reach his core… where he knew his spark chamber would inevitably be fated to lose its sapphire strand of generative electricity.

_Screech._

A burst of intolerable pain. The load currently squeezing his back was making its way through him, eating through the armor plating, stripping the Autobot of his defensive mechanisms. After the hard outer shell, the rest of him would only be appetizing meals. The pile began to bend his spinal chain strangely, Optimus feeling his barreled chest swell with heat as the torso was visibly being ripped apart.

_Arm._

One limb remained free. Optimus' right arm, freshly relieved as its load was flown seamlessly onto the Autobot's back, thrashed around. Optimus spotted a nearby hexagon only two finger lengths from his outstretched palms.

"Come on!"

No use. The bundle burrowing through his posterior was far too restrictive to allow energy to be moved. The same pungent odor filled his nostrils insultingly.

"AH!"

Another piece, probably located in his trapped leg, shattered underneath the weight. The pain was distracting, but Optimus still fought to remain fixated on the green hexagon just out of reach. A small pile of darkness rolled over, bringing the hexagon to just within his middle finger's clutch.

"That's… it…"

Although he had no conscious awareness of it, Optimus perceived his treasured chamber slowly becoming next-in-line. There was no more protective coating. It was simply a matter of time before…

And his finger touched it.

Optimus engaged his face plate. For a brief moment, the hexagon only shivered in the dark loneliness - before shrinking and promptly exploding. Chunks of the hexagon, set aflame by the colossal energy spawned, slapped Optimus distastefully across the jaw. The face protection reduced the damage, but it could not possibly prevent against the kinetic energy set in motion. The huge burden lying on top of him was elevated to a significant degree, but he also rose with it, smashing into it as he floated briefly. He remained hugged to the pile of filth for another four nanocycles as the inferno whipped around below him and shot straight up. The heated air expunged both the pile of rubble and Optimus, who flew through the comfortingly cold air before landing on the ground with a profound _thud._

The fire was not over. Although he wasn't physically capable of putting his head up and looking at the now destroyed pile of garbage, he saw a massive tornado of fire emerge three paces from him, capitalizing on the lighter components in the pile. The fire beamed into the porous sky, mixing in with acid and eventually rumbling to a halt. The heat died off.

Optimus stood erect, but quickly clutched his sides and fell to his knees. The danger of the situation had temporarily postponed the sensations, but the spasms now returned in full strength. His left leg was refusing to move, while his abdominal walls were expanding in vain. Blue patches, quite colorful in aesthetics, were shining through the thickened coating.

"Internal leaking…" he coughed, unable to maintain an even current in his chest.

_Beep._

Of course, the blinking green dot was still doggedly shouting itself, but the sustained damage to Optimus' body reduced its effectiveness. He bent down fully, letting the injured metal sag slightly towards the ground. Blue energon dripped from his lips and splashed across the flooring.

_Squelch._

Optimus widened his eyes in surprise.

"What the - "

The sound did not come from flooring. The energon that was dancing across the "flooring" was dynamically adjusting, tilting, moving, and falling… all to accommodate the "flooring", which was muttering Cybertronian.

"3939393939393…" the floor spoke.

Optimus backed away as a slender crimson head pushed through the layering. It was attached to a triangular body backed by gunmetal wings. The rising form's legs shakily stabilized the rest of it, but was still forcing the form to crouch.

"39393939393…"

Optimus quietly reached behind his thigh for a small compartment, repeating the touching movement to spawn another compartment, this time laced with a silver dagger.

"You killed me!" the autonomous robot roared.

He leaped onto the fragile Optimus, clawing at his exposed sides with success, forcibly withdrawing blue liquid. Optimus yelped in horror.

"You killed me! You killed me!"

_Shank._

Silence.

The form became motionless on top of the injured Autobot. A golden blade was pushed through its chest. Optimus blinked rapidly. The form was considerably lighter than him. Its weight was not tormenting his leaking chest, nor his leg.

"Please…" it begged, "Take me away from here."

Optimus tried to push it off himself, but the form remained clinged to his shoulders, refusing to budge.

"Please."

The larger Autobot slowed his hurried swipes. The form's crimson head, resting almost peacefully on the broad chest, whimpered.

"Help me."

Optimus retracted his blade, feeling the figure convulse violently, still somehow remaining flat on his chest.

"I knew you would help me..."

"What are you?" Optimus dared, keeping his blade still no farther than a meter close to the robot's concave torso.

"I don't know."

The blinking green dot vanished from the display.

**. . .**

"Just let me help..."

"And what?"

"Let me - "

"No."

"What about - "

"No..."

A feminine voice, persistent yet delicate, soothingly...

Megatron extended his arms in a smooth, unilateral movement. Tightness was flooding the shoulder sprockets, until -

_Snap._

"That's better," he mentioned privately to her, relieved that the gear was gradually filling with replenishing oil. "See? I didn't need you."

She guffawed.

"You underestimate me," she retorted. "You, and that loser Star-"

"Enough."

The female paused mid-sentence. Megatron's outstretched limbs returned to his sides, obediently rotating to test functionality. Aside from isolated although recurrent twitching, the arm had successfully regained most of its' former range of motion. Originally he mused over dragging it into the kitchen, where he could procure a tissue wrap. She thwarted this however, incessantly offering her help and detaining him in his earthwood chair. She seemed greatly offended by this.

"Z..." he consolingly spoke.

"Don't call me that," she spat. "I _hate _that nickname."

He snorted.

"I always tell you, and your faulty audio processor never picks it up..."

"What should I call you then?"

"By my _actual _name."

Megatron disregarded Xenon for now. Her name was a disgraceful tribute to an Earth element, which already disgusted him. Besides, he had long ago named himself Cybertron's sole protector of culture, and therefore felt it was his duty to keep her off of Earth mentalities. This way, a key portion of Cybertronian legacy was being preserved... and he wouldn't have to vomit. This attitude was sharply different to hers, which was composed of a fiery vernacular, but also a calming mindset, eager to never refuse a request, no matter how insignificant or humil -

"It was _your _turn to clean!" she shouted from across the square hall.

He was better than her at this task, under normal circumstances. Today's tiring events however, forced him to plop soundly onto a recharge mat rather than spend precious time scrutinizing the residence for aesthetic deficiencies. If it was dirty, then it was dirty... nothing could be done to escape their situation.

It was an exceedingly bare living quarters anyways. The space was bordered by heated rubber stretched across their heads to double as a ceiling, while white walls teeming with foreign life forms and uneven, pronounced edges (forged from remnant limestone) circled their rooms. In stark contrast to the metallic Cybertron, the asteroids were natural, almost entirely composed of mineral substitutes, and revoltingly organic. It would stand to reason then, that their sordid "home" followed the same trend. Worst perhaps among other organizational calamities, his private oil bank had been raided.

"You drink too much," he reprimanded, sternly clasping a mug on the floor and holding it up to eye-level, as if on cue. "Seriously."

"What?" she demanded, cheek frames pressed against the bottom of her eyes.

He rattled the cup in front of her.

"In my defense," she whispered, pronouncing her eyebrow chains, "your security is complete crap."

"Got past my combination lock, apparently..."

Megatron felt this was a rather useless additive. He knew that she _knew _the combination, and had constructed multiple theoretical scenarios where he might be... easily persuaded to release it.

He giggled softly as she resumed her pace back to the recharging quarters. The mug he was holding was only one of various items of rubbish strewn near his feet. Just two footsteps away, a conglomeration of failed plasma cannon modifications sat dejectedly in the center of the room. His experiments with his weapon of choice were not fruitful, but against Z's wishes, he had elected to retain the broken pieces.

_Hope_, a microscopic voice stuffed into a corner of his subconscious stated. _Stupid._

"Oil?" she offered, making her reappearance from the corner of his eye. "It would relax you."

"Yes please," he affirmed, shrugging his shoulder sprockets together to hear a satisfying _crunch_. "I _am _getting old."

"No you aren't," she responded, pacing towards him with an opaque jug brimming with murky liquid. She caressed a bit beforehand, kneading its surface to make sure it remained soft and fluid, warm enough to instill that tiny flint of content she longer sought after.

She eased it into his dense hands, watching him tip the container into his oral cavity with relish.

"Good?" she asked, perfectly aware of the answer.

Megatron stood up rather quickly. He was not exactly sure as to why he was going to sabotage himself, why the intention of spoiling such a rare moment of serenity came so aptly to him, but this particular bit of news was troubling him. He needed to divulge it, to throw his problems fully at her and wait dutifully for her inevitable help.

"No more ships," he stated, deliberately withholding the context knowingly from her. "None."

Her full lip sheets widened but she promptly used her fingers to conceal her mouth.

"_Nothing_?" she repeated, aghast.

"Zero."

"But," she reasoned. "They told us that the ships were just _lost_. Nothing like the - "

"Who's they?"

She paused, biting her lip sheet with hesitance. Megatron stepped towards her.

"Z," he used, clearly to foster communication. "Who?"

She gulped.

"Bots," she vaguely described. "Rumors, gossip, words, all going around..."

He exhaled huge bursts of vapor in relief.

"So no specific group?" he inquired.

She surveyed him beneath her curved eyelashes, strands of wire fluttering in deep melancholy.

"There has never been a specific group," she countered. "I mean, after Earth, and all of the... well, you know. All of what has happened and... there isn't an enemy anymore _Orion_."

A vicious, brutal clash of metal followed. Z clutched at the right side of her face in the ground, metal fiber roaring with pulsing pain. Reddening sensations... Megatron stood above her, brandishing his arm like a whip.

He looked at her for perhaps an eternity. The remorse that had come from doing the act had passed as quickly as an electromagnetic storm. His hand remained raised, vibrating with ferocious passion. His posture was forced forward, almost intended to corner her and decrease her personal space, to restrict and contain...

"_Never_," he muttered, hand shaking more, "utter that name again."

She whimpered, still covering her face in blatant expectation.

"I can't..." she moaned.

He stomped off, dropping the mug on the floor where it would undeniably splash and color the floor with deep shades of inky blackness. Then it would spread. And spread. And spread. The entire room would be dark.

* * *

**A/N**

**Hello! Enjoying it? Keep in mind that the work contains a lot of subtext and implications...**

**I'm glad you guys enjoyed the dialogue! I love writing speech, so it's just one of my enjoyable things to do!**

_**Answers to Q's:**_

_**1\. Specific Pairing?**_

**It's a bit too early to tell the audience right now (without spoiling it), as I want to keep the central relationships in mystery for now. But yes, there will be specific pairings, but one of them is definitely not the traditional Arcee x Optimus. I understand, they're brilliant characters but... what's wrong with platonic? If the romance part is excluded, then so much more emotionally engaging elements of their relationship can be brought to light... and trust me, it might end up being more enjoyable than conventional romance! Outside the box time!**

_**2\. How Long will it Be?**_

**Right now, I plan to write 100 chapters, totaling about 600,000 words! As I said, it will be a loooooong fic.**

_**3\. What is the "gist" of it?**_

**Without giving it away, it is an allegorical tale, a story mirroring the rise of the human race... except I thought the Transformers universe needed one really good, emotionally mature, dark, powerful, moving fic, so here's my best foot forward to try and deliver!**

**Other than that, R/R, review and enjoy the reading!**

**~Frax**


	3. Alone

_**S**nich. Crunch. Smuck. Crinch._

"Stop stomping," Optimus voiced. "A F.L.I.D is known to flock in areas of excessive noise."

The silver bot trailing behind him twisted his foot into a nearby glass shard, lathering it with all his toes.

"Fuck you."

Optimus groaned. More crunching.

**. . .**

He was very close. He restrained his disappointment as the silvery shadow of the Gate came into focus, fuzzy lines pushing determinedly past the dense brown fog. Mineral formations barred a complete view of the rest of the Autobot Base, but the metallic exterior, the massive wall, could be discerned easily. Optimus halted suddenly in the middle, gyrating his torso to crane his head upwards. As far as he could tell, the top two floors of the Base were inactive and lacked the bustle of Autobot life, so he had likely returned at a supply scouting time. Few bots would remain inside, assuredly Ratchet and Bulkhead, and perhaps a few protoforms too inexperienced to leave their comparatively safer abode.

"What is this?"

Optimus turned around, feeling his age wear down his movement. He frowned as the silver robot continued to stamp his feet defiantly.

"That won't work against me," he warned the smaller robot. "I'm not annoyed by it."

"By _this_?" the robot leered, crushing a servo laying on the floor.

"Why give me so much trouble?" Optimus asked, eyebrow ridges tightening. "Change your mind about killing me?"

"I wasn't trying to kill you," the robot sneered. "I... just reacted..."

"To what?"

"Something about you."

"What about me?"

Cybertron's immense and dry heat was bounding off the metal, making the robot shimmer. He twiddled his thumb frames for a while, trying to avoid eye contact.

"I don't know," he finally admitted.

Optimus arched his ridges in surprise. The smushing din of servos being crushed stopped.

"This is the Autobot Base," he gesticulated towards the structure. "It's more of a safe haven than a Base. We don't engage any military expenditures anymore."

"Then what do you do?"

Optimus turned his back, facing the Base once more. He wished it could spontaneously disappear, leaving him alone to dwell in his thoughts. "Survive."

He marched forward. He neither bothered to try to hear the smaller robot's footsteps behind him, nor cared if he was following him or not. The robot was not shackled, was not imprisoned, nor was he being compelled to join him. Simple requests: supplies, Energon, and a spaceship numbered all of his needs to follow Optimus.

Soon, he was standing right next to the Gate, its large shadow dwarfing both automatons. Unlike Arcee's quandary, he had special knowledge of the Gate's working features and hidden functions. With a complex finger combination inputted, it rose sharply, almost as if on demand. Optimus strode into the chasm with a bit of confidence, satisfied to hear the lack of conversation from behind him. Maybe something about the Base had confused the young bot, had excited him, had reminded him...

"What do we do now?" the voice behind him asked, marveled by the pale whiteness encircling him.

"The Tube."

**. . .**

Honestly speaking, he wished he would not have been as annoying as this. Moving from the entrance platform into the Medical Bay headquarters was a move he had hoped would inspire silence in the normally noisy robot, but instead had inspired him to assault Optimus with a barrage of useless, highly confusing questions.

"Shut up," Optimus whispered, lightly tenderizing his injured midsection with a damp Energon seal. Most of the leaking had ceased, but the rust formation was troubling.

"Fine. Whatever Outmode." the bot desisted.

"That is _not _my name," Optimus spat, clenching his jaw in exasperation.

"But you're so outdated."

"Agreed. Why can't I name you 39?"

Silence. Optimus stopped jabbing his abdominal wall with the moist cloth. He passively observed the robot treading across the blue floor, idly passing his fingers over cabinets and disturbing several of Ratchet's medical equipment. Usually, a swinging golden lamp above Optimus' head would illuminate half of the lab, which would have allowed him to survey the bot's expression. Sadly, Bulkhead's proclivity for incredible clumsiness had brought its early death.

"What is your name?" Optimus rephrased, lowering his tone and stripping it of its derision.

The smaller transformer stopped knocking over injection needles.

"Nova Void," he stated, rather apologetically.

Optimus resumed applying the moist cloth. "By any chance related to Nova Prim-"

"Oh, Primus no," Void rescinded, holding up both hands for dramatic emphasis, as if Optimus had uttered the most offensive insult he had ever heard. "Not even close."

"So just like the rest of us... a nobody..."

Void mewled a bit, grinding his windpipes together. "You aren't _them _though. The great Optimus Prime... by the way, is is true that after Earth vaporized, you were forced to - "

"There, finished," Optimus cut through, carelessly lobbing the wet cloth in Void's direction, watching him recoil with confusion. "We have to scan you in."

Void stepped back closer to the cupboards, allowing Optimus enough space to close in and use his impressive size for the purposes of intimidation.

"I'm not scanning shit," he barked, tilting his head forward again with a twinge of dramatic gesturing.

"Then you won't get your stuff then."

Void whined quietly, resolutely plowing through Optimus' unfazed lack of guilt.

"I'm asking for a _few_ things!"

"Those _things_," Optimus reiterated mockingly, "take immense time and resources to give. Energon and a spare spaceship... when the explosion occurred, did you lose half of your processor?"

Void tightened his fists in a show of anger.

"What were you doing in a garbage pile anyway?" Optimus questioned, moving back to cease infringing Void's personal radius. "That signal you gave off... we thought you were a generator of sorts."

"I have a spark smart one," Void insulted unabashedly. "And I needed to see if anyone else was on Cybertron."

Optimus moved over to the right corner of the room, tapping the metal framework in a series of hurried flicks to locate Ratchet's icon on the weakly shining holographic display.

"How many are you?"

Optimus groaned.

"Your question," he began, "has no grammatical sense."

Optimus could perceive Void unloading an expletive under his exhale, but it was not sufficiently quiet enough to skip past his audio detectors. Again, he had been underestimated...

"How many Autobots still live here?" the restructured question fired back.

Optimus grinned widely as Ratchet's bright portrait flashed onto the hologram. "Approximately 253... give or take a few."

"Wow..." Void gasped, ignoring Optimus' preoccupation with the hologram. "There used to be trillions of us... guess I was in recharge for a long time."

"Ratchet," Optimus called to the flicking display, "I need you to get in here. Found a new bot..."

Void slashed the air with his hands in a criss-crossing pattern, clearly uncomfortable.

" - needs to be scanned."

Void's middle digit stuck out proudly towards Optimus.

" - bring along a powerful tranquilizer too."

Optimus waved away the electronic display, watching it fade dimly into the shadows.

"How long will getting a working ship take?" Void asked again.

"Ok proto," Optimus insisted. "You just can't - "

"I'm _not _a protoform," Void shot back. "I have a _name_."

"Sorry, it's the silver paint job," Optimus reconciled, although smiling in a confusingly sinister fashion. "Throws me off."

"How long will - "

"Forever."

Void scoffed, staring at Optimus with no real focus.

"Liar," he stated. "I saw some of the ship parts you guys were collecting when we got through the Tube - no idea why you call it that by the way – and were walking to the Medical Bay. Crap just laying around..."

"That _crap_," Optimus growled, again moving back to dwarf Void. "Was megacycles of hard work, scouting..."

"Then why aren't you guys doing anything with it?"

"Please kill each other."

Optimus and Void simultaneously turned their heads to the right, seeing Ratchet's authoritative form stride into view quickly from beneath the hangar archway.

"I see you all have been making it a point to destroy my already piece-of-shit lab," he remarked, hastily bending forward to pick up fallen needles. "Appreciate the sentiment bots..."

Ratchet rapidly glimpsed Void before resuming cleaning.

"Prime... you had me under the impression you brought a _bot_. Not a proto."

"I'm not a protoform," Void declared with defiance.

"So you gave off that signal eh?" Ratchet inquired, examining Void without requesting permission. He began slapping his arms roughly. "Too bad you're not a generator - and it would be medically unethical to pull the Spark outta you.."

"You've got some crappy bedside manner," Void retorted, twitching uneasily as Ratchet resumed his intrusive examination. "But that's understandable... considering you're such an Outmode."

"Is that what you protos think is insulting these days?" Optimus interrupted, expressing genuine curiosity.

"I'm not a pro - "

"Sure, half of me is already in the scrapheap," Ratchet broke in, finishing his medical tests with a noisy slap to the back. "But get this kid... this is _not _your bed."

Void gulped, somehow put off by Ratchet's direct, impolite manner.

"Rule two," the medic continued, "our _ship_ will not function for at least another megacycle at least. It's just garbage for now... and at the rate we're finding Energon... Arcee and that adequately named Bumblebee..."

"A _megacycle?!_" Void yelled, completely refusing Optimus' quiet pleas for lowing his vocal range. "That's like 365 _Earth days_!"

"Yes, pleased to see your processor is still functioning," Ratchet sarcastically bit, "although you're definitely not the supernova of the bunch."

Void looked perplexed for a moment, as if struggling to comprehend Ratchet's insult. Optimus took this momentary silence as an opportunity to cut in:

"Done scanning him?" he asked.

"Yep," Ratchet responded. "He seems to be in pretty good shape. There's some unidentified scarring on his left wing, but that's probably from tripping and falling. Or a weapon misfire. Or blah blah blah I don't care..."

"I forgot, you can fly," Optimus stated, turning back to Void. "How did you get those scars?"

"Like he said," Void blankly mentioned, gesturing in Ratchet's direction with a slender index finger. "I fell."

Optimus narrowed his eyes at the dual winged Transformer.

"So the big question..." Ratchet hummed, holding a scalpel unnervingly close to his own hand. "Autobot, or Decepticon?"

"Well, uh," Void muttered, looking at Optimus then Ratchet, repeating this ridiculous head motion several times. "Neither."

"Neither?" Ratchet gawked, lifting his left eyechain up in pure skepticism.

"Well after Earth..." Void trailed off, trying to recollect his thoughts. "There is no Autobot or Decepticon. It's just... bots."

"Bots..." Optimus too drawled off.

Optimus remained quiet for as long as he possibly could. The mere emptiness of the response, the admission of blankness, and the defeat of the formation of "sides"... if there were no more sides, then what remained? Was there anything worth salvaging? A divided, distant species, forever doomed to drift endlessly across the cosmos...

"I guess you stick around for a while," he interjected, determined to break off all his philosophical thoughts. "You can room with Bumblebee."

"Who the fuck is Bumblebee?" Void asked rather rudely.

"He's like you," Ratchet described. "But smarter. And less clumsy."

Void intuitively understood this was an insult, but was slightly annoyed by the fact that he wasn't able to laugh at it, made especially exasperating when Optimus guffawed and pat Ratchet appreciatively on the shoulder joint.

**. . .**

"Come on then, hit 'em in the eye!"

_Snrunch._

"Beat him with the rock!"

_Crack._

"Use some of that mass on your right arm by Primus' sake!"

_Smash._

Megatron was losing. Unfortunately for him, Dreadwing's superior size and strength had endowed him with the uniquely rare ability to toss his foe around with minimal effort. This, added with his convoluted but upgraded right arm, made Dreadwing capable of controlling the pace of the scuffle, even with Megatron's time-tested tactic of grappling moves. For instance, effectively blocking Dreadwing's punches were suicidal as the larger robot's dense, re-hemmed metal was very heavy and thus very resistant to compression. If Megatron attempted to clutch onto one of the massive Decepticon's wings in a wrestling move, he would simply flip the lighter Transformer off his back and proceed to crush his oblique gears. Regardless, it was completely ineffectual to try and directly fight off Dreadwing, so Megatron had resorted to his usual strategy dubbed "tactical retreating".

"Give 'im some of those haymakers!"

_Wham_.

The bar patrons were not helping in any way whatsoever. Technically, their encouraging bouts of instigation were useful to Dreadwing, but not so much for the enemy he was currently pulverizing. Together, they formed a protective ring of onlooking robots, anxiously pushing both fighters back into the center where their brawling selves could be completely viewed for the crowd's hedonistic enthusiasm.

"Come on, end him already!"

_Crunch._

A hurtful right hook. Dreadwing was inhibiting Megatron's range of motion, forcing him to improvise by stamping rather pathetically on Dreadwing's massive feet motors, which of course proved to be just as ineffectual as running away.

_Snarch._

The pain was tingling harshly, but he had managed to pin one of the massive arms to his torso and rotate it violently. Dreadwing didn't seem to be affected, but Megatron found another opportunity...

_Snap._

The joint twisted past its point of usual...

_Snich._

The servo popped out feebly, and Dreadwing cried out.

_Snuck._

A loose arm fell limply to the ground.

"You cheating bastard!"

"That's cheap you motherf - "

"Primus save us all..."

Megatron stood uneasily over Dreadwing's twitching form. It was crumpled and shaking violently, still feebly attempting to swat away at the feet that was planted firmly in front of it. Megatron stamped viciously on the flailing fingers, hearing a resounding _crunch_.

He looked around. The previously chaotic bar inhabitants were silent and reserved, stepping back quietly to respective seats and resuming their usual conversation. A few stragglers lingered behind, staring in horror at him. Megatron scoffed before trampling Dreadwing once again and pushed open the dual doors into the milky darkness.

"Fucking idiot..."

He strolled through the misty fog, feeling Cybertron's metallic luminescence vaporize in front of him, splashing across the rock floor and crashing into nooks of the stalactite formations. Mineral or not, the organic, irregular nature of his surroundings occasionally put his bearings off... there were layers, levels of society thriving on individual rock floors, but the overall shape of the asteroid was degraded. He could not fathom how it still held resolutely together for so many stellar cycles, buttressed only by sporadic limestone supports and mountainous flooring. Just the effort taken to walk across was inherently demanding... walking in a perpetual cave, forever lost in the infinite cosmos.

"Asshole."

He was not sure where all this unnecessary rage was spawning from. Admittedly, Dreadwing's loud, irritated dancing had driven him to slug the robot in the face, but now that the joyful dancing was gone and the miserable happiness was absent... what was he so angry about?

He could not return home, of course. Returning to that tragic wasteland would entail him having to ponder over what happened to Z, what the implication of his previous actions were, and a bunch of unnecessary things that he would rather blast than take the time to think about. Besides, one safe haven remained: and as long as he would make his way across the chiseled pathways bordered by stony spikes and large boulders, cut through the deformed, ugly landscape, he could reach that safe place and finally express his thoughts.

It was well past recharging period. It had actually started two decacycles ago, but the bar was teeming with indulgent, pleasure-seeking underlings around the Cybertronian timekeeper, and Megatron never enjoyed recharging anyway. Whatever that human garbage was about dreams and the existence of a soul was frightening – and from now on, he determined himself to never admit that out fact out loud.

The rock formations were lessening, massive boulders reduced to only small collections of pebbles and wide slabs of stone thrown erratically over the hard floor. Occasionally he would have to make a high jump or duck underneath a cave bottom, but for the most part the landscape was moderating... at an alarming late.

_How ironic_, he thought.

Just twenty paces from where Megatron was, there lay a house. It was not exactly a house per say (but the same could be said for any residence on this asteroid), but it was certainly a dwelling, sporting four bright lights powerfully bounding from within the home's rock walls. It was rather small for a living quarters, and if Megatron did not know _precisely _who lived there, it would be both reasonable and easy to assume that local organic life thrived there. Indeed, no metallic beams, silver supports, or really any sign of Cybertronian life were detectable. But this was not because no one lived there, but rather because the resident living there chose to give up completely.

A small brown door stood in front of Megatron, about 10 feet below his actual height.

"Starscream," he whispered through the right crack. "Open the door."

"Go away."

Megatron hummed idly.

"If you don't let me in," he threatened, "I'll stay here all night."

"By Primus..."

The doors were pulled open very violently, revealing the sharply illuminated interior. He was mistaken - five lights were present, except one was hidden just underneath the floorboards, beaming brightly but not powerfully enough to break past the hardwood exterior and fly out of the four holes to announce their presence to the world. If Megatron did not know Starscream donned occasional dark purple finishing, then he might have mistaken the winged form in front of him as a visual anomaly or worse, a human concept...

"You look like a ghost," Megatron remarked, coughing slightly as the rich but frigid air clattered his engine. "Still functioning?"

"Do you plan to come in or not?"

He stepped in.

Starscream immediately shut the doors. Megatron stared deceitfully at the floor while Starscream walked back to the room's right side, shaking a kettle burning over a high flame. Blue wisps of air came out of it.

He looked around. The interior was, if possible, even more disgustingly organic than the outside. Crevices and sprawling cracks shoved across rock in brutal fashion inside the walls. Rumbling white stone above Megatron's head shivered as the pressure of the asteroid's gravity weighed it down, taking advantage of limestone's natural malleability by twisting it into a concave shape. The room was spare of course, containing the flickering fire Starscream was utilizing, and a small cot to his left, next to the heat. The five lights playing across the room provided more of a dank ambiance rather than true illumination. It

"This real wood?" Megatron inquired, pressing his fingers lightly against the floor.

"Some carryover from Earth," Starscream mentioned almost carelessly, bringing the boiling kettle closer to Megatron before sitting down. "Probably the last."

"Looks... aesthetic," Megatron admitted, following Starscream down to the floor. The fumes waving away from within the heated kettle were infectiously beautiful. Stascream opened his mouth and took a great lungful of air, stretching the arm grasping the kettle towards Megatron.

"Thank you - " he began, only to find it slip from its grasp as Starscream finished yawning and brought it back possessively to both his metallic hands.

"Just stretching..." Starscream explained. "Besides, liquified Energon is _not _cheap."

"On here maybe..."

Starscream was about to tilt the kettle into his mouth, but stopped abruptly, face full of malice.

"Still on that crap to go to Cybertron?" he asked.

Megatron tumbled his head down, squeezing his hands together.

"I'm not here to discuss that," he refused. "I just want a place to stay."

"Ok, then there's no need for us to talk then," Starscream bluntly finished.

"Why don't you then?"

Starscream twisted his head sideways and pursed his mouth. Evidently, the liquid's taste was dismal.

"Because you're not worth it," he bit. "Because you're a coward. And a liar."

"Just support me on this one plan," Megatron begged, preventing Starscream from taking another sip. "Just stick with me for one more - "

"No," came the abrupt reply, as Starscream pulled away. "I nearly lose my spark when I go along with you."

"Then what can I do to convince you?" he requested, fingers still stupidly balled in air.

"Cybertron is out of our reach Megatron," Starscream advocated. "It belongs to the Autobots. We made that pact so many stellar cycles ago."

"Yet their population has stayed the same, while ours has tripled."

"Agreeably so," Starscream replied. "But that is the consequence of our decisions..."

Megatron felt a hidden anger, deeply suppressed yet consequentially familiar, arise.

"So that's it... we just give up?"

"Even if we attack Cybertron with all our forces," Starscream allowed, "we would lose half of our forces squashing the Autobots."

"So?"

Starscream dropped his kettle, flustered by the ignorant replies.

"Are you an idiot?" he accused. "Why lose half our brethren when we can survive on here?"

"You call this surviving?" Megatron clenched the fallen metal kettle, showing its disgusting exterior to Starscream's face. "This is garbage."

"The glory days are over you fool," Starscream retorted, smacking the kettle away from Megatron's loosened grip. "Nothing but living. The bare minimum."

"Why don't we live among them?" Megatron asked. "Try to cooperate - "

"Get out," the command softly shined. "Now."

Megatron trembled in his seated position for a while, waiting for Starscream to rise and extend his finger toward the door. Eventually, his form did ascend, but instead of immediately pointing the way out of the house, strolled back to the fire and heated another kettle. Megatron sighed in earnest, confused and thoroughly exhausted. The injuries from Dreadwing's onslaught were rusting with glee, and his torso was being increasingly stiffened by the quickly forming injury sites. He vaguely wondered if Starscream had any medication, but then quickly squashed the thought.

"Here," the Decepticon extended to Megatron, after finishing his heating. "Liquified Energon is supposed to be quite nourishing."

"Much grace..."

Megatron grasped the container gingerly, tipping it into his throat. A burning sensation followed, although it was rapidly usurped by a smooth numbness.

"Tastes like crap," he joked, smiling at Starscream, to his surprise, returned the gesture.

"You can spend the night," he affirmed. "There's a cot beneath this hardwood crap. Where the fifth light is."

Megatron took note of the perfectly square fissure enveloping the dimly glowing light, circling the hardwood.

"Right..." he blankly mentioned. "Right..."

"How is Z?" Starscream infiltrated, causing a twinge of regret in Megatron.

"Fine," he lied. "She's been a bit sick though."

Starscream had definitely detected suspicion, as both eyebrow ridges raised in cross-examination, but Megatron played it off slyly as tiredness.

"Do you trust me?" Megatron mused, taking more of the soothing liquid into his throat.

"No," Starscream acknowledged. "Not anymore."

"You used to."

"I did," Starscream remembered, gazing at the fifth light with stubborn defiance. "I used to think you would save us all."

"I still have some worth," he tried, using the pity appeal.

"Of course you do," Starscream stabilized. "Nothing worth investing in."

Megatron gulped down the last of the liquefied Energon. Starscream moved to put covers over each of the glowing Energon lights, throwing the metallic cover roughly over the yellow auras. Slowly, light began to lose its luster from within the limestone walls, retreating back to their containers before being mushed inside the covers. Darkness cocooned itself across the room, steadily infecting the walls and roof. The single golden light, humming more fiercely now, blinded him as Starscream pulled the ringed handle connected to the floor, revealing a cozy dark space... alone with the golden light.

"In you go," he assessed, gesturing inside the space. "It might be a bit cramped, but that's the only place that has a recharging station."

Megatron recoiled at the sight of the abysmal station, crawling with oil and F.L.I.D remnants.

"Thanks," he begrudgingly pronounced.

Megatron climbed into the tight space and soon heard the closing of a heavy metal gate. He sniffled. He pushed across the F.L. and smoothed across the oil, flipping the recharging station on the other side. Fortunately, this side was spared from the debris, featuring just limestone dust left over, clinging to the gaps.

Megatron laid down, feeling the 6-pinned port briskly connect to the back of his head, causing a beam of energy to flash. He vibrated in bursts of capricious emotion, unable to fully control his own body, even as familiar as this situation was. And every night, euphoria, pure as Energon and bright as Cybertron, raged throughout his head, crashing into all sorts of useless, old, and broken things.

**. . .**

Optimus found it rather difficult to rationalize his decisions and make tough choices, a critical flaw in his organizational skills that had plagued him for a long time... even when Sentinel Prime was in command and he was the scrawny but brainy secondary pilot, he was never trusted with decision-making. He gave reasons of course, citing his strategic ineptitude as the product of a poor world surrounding him, too many options to choose from, and a bunch of other phony pretexts that Sentinel had ignored almost completely. Even after he managed to look back at his former mentor's face back in Chicago, glimpse the burning scars and leaking midsection, all he could think about is how savagely pulling the trigger on Megatron's shotgun felt. The explosion was voluminous; spewing bursts of fresh Energon from Sentinel's face, drenching the concrete bridge and birthing a fantastic fireworks show just above what remained of Sentinel's head. Some vague voice inside him beeped erroneously, urging him to recall the emotional implications of killing his former leader, but Optimus only wanted to see the fireworks show again. So bright...

"It's either nuts or Energon sticks Prime," Wheeljack insisted, making apologetic gestures at the torrent of Autobots behind Optimus waiting patiently for the opportunity to select their food. "Not much choice."

"Sorry," Optimus broke out, grasping a handful of Energon sticks and cramming them into his rectangular plate. "Lots of stuff in my processor."

"And yet he picks the same thing every day..." Wheeljack complained, nudging Optimus away from behind the shining yellow counter before screaming, "Next!"

This was only one of the obstacles however, as Optimus next had to decide whom to give his company too. Each group, as childish as he was making it sounds, had tradeoffs: to his left, seated on the broad metallic floor closest to the Luncheon's tall walls, was Bumblebee, Bulkhead, Hot Rod, and (when he was permitted to leave his two-cycle shift at the food counter) soon, Wheeljack. Sitting with this conglomeration of young bots would be interesting, as Optimus had not yet made the stupid choice of hanging around bots potentially a tenth of his Cybertronian age. Besides, they all frustrated him by using sexual lingo, profanity, and the most abstruse vernacular he had ever heard. Approximately 20 paces from them sat Ratchet, alone but defiantly so, shirking off leagues of sycophantic protoforms who predictably wanted to usurp his position or even worse, score some free "substances" off the gristly medic. This was ineffective however, as three of Ratchet's five senses were defunct in at least one way or another, and the remaining two were used (to great effect, Optimus added) to verbalize lengthy diatribes that were almost poetic. Indeed, his derisive speeches were always eloquently formed, in the most twisted, horrid, and violent of ways.

Too much. So many groups of Autobots bundling together, laughing, crying, but undeniably glued to each other. Every time he would turn his neck around, all he saw were groups and formations, miniature clubs and societies, societal organizations in one way or another (even Ratchet had pranking followers, even if he constantly attempted to kill them)... and here he was as usual, standing in the midst of a sea of small homes, not even possessing the courage to knock at a door without vividly imagining the repercussions.

"Optimus!"

The last two times he heard it, Optimus had swung his head too shamelessly to the side. This time, he made an effort to take precisely three cycles to locate the source of the calling, although perfectly clear on who it originated from.

"Come over here!" Arcee shouted from a sitting position, invitingly patting the space on the floor next to her.

She was sitting rather far back from the food counter, which would make frequent trips to obtain sustenance quite difficult (especially considering the new tactic of "ambushing then stealing"), but her back was slumped naturally against the back wall, mouth casually emitting rings of gas towards the dark sky. Evidently, she had noticed the acidic cloud formations too, but that was a matter for another time.

"Um, you can sit down now."

Optimus energized back to life, seeing a blank wall eclipse his vision. _Idiot._

"I don't get why you stand around like a jackass after lunch starts," Arcee mocked. "You always end up coming here anyway."

"Sorry," Optimus admitted, slumping his form down rather unhealthily but happily next to Arcee. "Old age."

"And Slow processor?"

"Yeah..."

Arcee giggled lightly before poking the gelatinous mass wiggling on her plate.

"Wheeljack sucks at everything..." she groaned, frowning as the mass leaked with creamy blue liquid.

"How did you get liquified Energon?" Optimus spoke out, similarly prodding the chubby blue center, fully prepared for it to enlarge and start eating Autobots. "And why? It tastes like crap."

"Found some old matter lying around in Storage," she gleamed. "And secondly - " she suddenly pulled the plate away from Optimus' prying fingers with disdain. "It's more nourishing than the standard stuff."

"Opportunist." Optimus huffed, before beginning to examine his sticks lying innocently on his plate.

"Outmode."

He sighed. "How come I'm the only one that doesn't know about this..."

"She's right," a voice came in abruptly. "You are pretty old."

Optimus growled softly as Void bounced in, shaking his head aimlessly towards the sky. He sat down in front of Optimus' outstretched legs, shoving them aside to place his full plate next to them. Quickly he began stuffing his face, the audible chewing noises breaking through the silence and annoying Arcee.

"Get out of here Proto," Optimus demanded, kicking Void's sides to move him away.

"I am _not _a protoform."

"Um, who are you?" Arcee questioned.

Void moved out of the blue leg's reach before looking squarely at Arcee. He laughed lightly and resumed filling his oral cavity with chunks of nuts.

"Nova Void," he let out between _chomps_.

"By any chance - " Arcee began, unaware that Void had predicted her question already.

"Not related to him in any way, no."

"Certainly," Optimus affirmed, disgusted by Void's rapid and visible chewing gears. "He wouldn't eat like that."

"Haw haw, very funny."

"Are you the new bot Optimus found?" Arcee considered.

"He is," Optimus confirmed, looking at Void with malice. "Actually he - "

Void let out a violent, deliberate cough. Optimus ignored this subverted begging.

" - attempted to kill me as soon as - "

"Not true!" Void exclaimed.

"I don't really care gentlebots," Arcee broke in. "Excuse me, need some more Energon..."

Arcee stood up, brushing past Void while gently tapping him on the head, making it _clink_. Optimus frowned.

"Listen proto," he whispered, pulling Void closer to him mid-mouthful. "Stop following me around."

"Awww," Void mewled, smiling. "Jealous that the fembot is into me instead of you?"

Optimus began laughing uproariously. Void glared.

"She's – twice – your – age!" Optimus managed out between laughs. "Pathetic..."

Void snickered, relieved to hear the response. "Well yeah, she hates me. Don't worry about it."

Optimus put on a confused expression. "I'm not trying to do anything with her. We're past that."

Void coughed again, wagging his finger at Optimus concernedly. "You mean you and her used to - "

"No," Optimus terminated. "But something else."

Void stared at Optimus for a while, desiring more information but at the same time reluctant to test him further. Optimus of course took no heed to his hidden desire, cramming the disgusting Energon sticks into his mouth. He mused briefly over why Void had chosen to meet with him right now. Technically, he was scheduled for a visit with Ratchet, who would show him the ship parts that he so desperately expressed interest in. But considering Ratchet's disposition, his angry waving, and murderous attitude...

"You're supposed to be with Ratchet," Optimus inserted.

Void stopped eating, slamming the plate down accidentally, ruffled by the statement.

"I know," he indicated. "Can I stay here?"

"Why?" Optimus demanded, aggravated by Void's insistence. "This is my personal time. My time with a good friend. She keeps me sane, and - "

Void pressured him.

"And?"

"Go away proto," Optimus finished.

Void closed his eyes, bending his head down to avoid eye contact with Optimus. He knew his piercing gaze was currently burrowing itself through his cranium, but he didn't want to look up. That would mean he would have to face those blue retinas, reply to that stern, harsh voice, and respond to that accusatory, isolated vocal processor.

"Sorry." Void let out.

Optimus felt something stab him in the side. It wasn't a physical force, but it was inherently an instinct that was frustrating to say the least. It was powerful and persuasive, yet he denied its existence and tried to shove it away, force it to crush itself in his processor, where that instinct could be examined, scrutinized, and eventually deleted.

"Can I stay here?" Void asked in earnest.

Optimus growled, choosing not to look at Void's silver face.

"...please?"

Another burst of it. He hated it. He hated it so much.

"Sure."

Optimus growled again, but Void was far from distant. In fact, he happily made his way to Optimus' side, sitting down next to him and leaning his head back against the metal wall. He looked at Optimus, flaring his eyes at him. The larger Autobot noticed that Void's eyes were flickering wildly.

"Your retinal sensors are green," he told Void.

"I know."

"That's pretty rare."

Optimus realized just now, that Arcee had left and he had been speaking for a full attacycle without even being fully aware that she had truly left. Almost as if... she did not leave at all.

"Can I ask you a question?"

Optimus turned to Void, still gawking at him with poorly-hidden ad...

"Shoot," the red and blue Autobot requested.

Void drew in a large breath, making sure he was able to successfully deliver his question with clarity.

"What does 'supernova of a bunch' mean?"

Optimus steepled together his huge fingers, capitalizing on a rare opportunity.

"What an Outmode," Optimus whispered underneath his breath.

Void smiled broadly, green retinal sensors shining warmly against the acidic vapor formations in the sky, careless and free enough to keep looking at Optimus, who was beguiled enough to not notice them either.

* * *

**A/N**

**Hello! Dialogue-heavy, but the story has to be showed, not told... theoretically speaking anyway! I again urge readers to pay attention to every line... it's a gradual story, but I'll promise with both hands (and feet) to try and make it fulfilling!**

**I don't really have much to announce than just R/R, review and enjoy the reading!**

**~Frax**

**P.S: According to one lovely reviewer, looks like "M" is the way to go! **


	4. Headhunting

Bright. Too bright. Yellow. Flashing. Blue. Lightning. _Blood_.

Whizzing colors. He was running across the dirt road in a highly uncoordinated fashion, traipsing over small bumps and sliding down suddenly appearing hills. It was immensely difficult to stay on course... with every carefully executed foot plant, the brown rubble beneath him would contort and flex, whipping him about as if he weighed nothing.

It would help him greatly if there were supports shooting out to his sides, but instead only passing waves of color, rippling and powerful, remained as company. He could not touch them either, and even when he did, his hands would melt scathingly. Crusted bits of metal would ooze, squishing against the ground and slipping off his body. So the only way he could run, he was _forced _to run, was the dirt road. And so he did.

_Snrich._

Previously, he had been able to see nothing above him, just spurts of heavy darkness that was as blinding as it was frightening. With a small sound however, the dense fog parted ways, splitting open like a faulty capsule and twisting sideways. It took him several cycles to accurately make out what was emerging from within the vast sea of blackness.

A rotating sphere.

He stopped running. He kept gazing at the ball dancing above him, its luminous presence keeping the black fog from extending its presence anymore across the horizon. He smiled at it, waving both arms maniacally towards it. Excited, it proceeded to fill itself with color, sucking it away from the walls surrounding him and shoving all of it inside itself, radiating with energy... almost like a pulse. The blue spread across its exterior and bounced up and down, while chunks of green were splashed across the surface.

It was... incredibly aesthetic. The way the colors mixed together. The manner in which the blue overwhelmed the green. It technically gave the sphere artistic imbalance, but at the same time great beauty... a concept eluding Cybertronian proportions, past traditional artistry and conventions – perfection to a transcendent degree, past comprehension. It was something so far beyond thinking, so past logic, that it became something even more. It was everything.

It giggled and rose sharply into the sky, descending then ascending in a cyclic, soothing manner. He kept smiling.

A leak.

He was not sufficiently close enough to see the exact form of the liquid trailing behind the sphere, but it was undeniably thick and amorphous. Gradually, the streams pouring from the center of the sphere became bright and cheery, first red, then green, then blue. Soon, the splashes of green on the sphere heated and rose, shining furiously with red overtones. The blue followed suit, as he watched it from below with increasing concern.

_Bleeding_.

It was bleeding, he had only understood! It drifted downwards, vomiting out colors and blowing out wisps of air again to the previously gray walls around him. The sphere ceased vibrating. It looked swollen, red, and completely injured.

"Give it back you bastards..." he whimpered, falling to his knees as the sphere pushed him downwards. He ran at the walls, punching them with lustful rage. "GIVE IT ALL BACK!"

The walls wobbled a little bit, ruffled by the assault, but arrogantly kept their color. He kept looking back at the sphere, which was making the transition from red to dark-red, then purple, then...

"Please," he begged, feeling moisture overwhelm his retinal sensors, short-circuiting the tender fibers. "Please give it back."

The walls jettisoned away from him, receding into the darkness until all the colors were completely out of sight. He turned his attention back to the bleeding sphere.

"Don't do this please, don't do this..." he repeated stupidly, hugging the sphere with his entire chassis.

_Gas._

"No..." he refused, shaking his head defiantly back and forth. "No, no, no, no..."

As much as he tried, the sphere was beginning to soften and decrease in size, compressing its hard exterior into smooth gas. Parts of the sphere were floating away, while the other was rapidly undergoing the same process.

"Stay here please..."

No use. The sphere continued to turn to gas, eventually escaping their rigid positions forever. The gases too kept floating away, away from his grasp and lost to the cosmic wasteland around him.

He buckled over, vomiting profusely onto the dirt road.

"What?" he questioned, seeing the spatter he had made on the floor. _Red. Blue. Green. _He gasped, feeling his engine stop momentarily.

The sphere stopped softening, although only a quarter of it remained solid now. It nudged him softly on the head, as if demanding an explanation.

"I swear this wasn't me..." he pleaded with the sphere, again short-circuiting his eyes. "I swear I don't know how I have it..."

The sphere did not care. It had only halted its escape to talk to him, and resumed floating away, deconstructing itself into the blackness. He slashed at the colored vomit on the floor, smashing it with all his fingers until they too broke against the dirt road, spilling out more hues of green and blue.

"I didn't... I couldn't... I would never..."

_Blood. _Lightning. Blue. Flashing. Yellow. Too bright. Bright.

_Thud._

_Thud._

_Thud._

_Thud._

_Thud._

"You ok?"

Optimus tried to open his retinal sensors, but he was currently suffocating himself by lying on his abdominal wall. His chest, broad and large-wired as it was, was asphyxiating beneath the weight of his entire chassis. He assumed a plank position, pushing up strongly with silver arms, trickling with blue Energon. They stung painfully as he rose, scar matter quickly forming across deep incisions in his forearm flexor motors. He prodded them anxiously.

"You..." the form watching over him giggled, although earnestly trying to conceal his amusement. "Fell off your recharging station."

Optimus focused his sensors, seeing with a fair bit of instinctive annoyance, Bumblebee covering his oral cavity with his right palm, the other clasping a flashing Energon lamp.

"I guess I did," he admitted to the slender yellow Autobot, who backed away quickly.

"I didn't mean to intrude Boss-Bot," Bumblebee apologized, jiggling the lamp. "But I heard a loud noise. And it's my turn for Gate patrolling, so I just figured I might as well..."

"Go back to the Gate," Optimus commanded, ignoring the younger's anxious concern. "That's your post."

"Right," Bumblebee agreed, keen to avoid arguments. "I'll get out of your way."

He paced away, exiting the single door room with flourish, before closing the door behind him.

Optimus examined the cuts on his left forearm, then looked back to the recharging station placed above him, balanced on a heavy metal pedestal. It was oriented sideways, which would explain why he fell off, and judging by the speck of Energon caught on the the right corner's tip, he had cut himself on the way down. He reached around his cranium and gingerly felt the two pin holes extruding from the back of his head, still warm from the interfacing with the recharging station. Bumblebee had ran here quickly indeed.

Nothing else remained untidy however. Even if it was no longer needed, Optimus took a certain level of pride in his cleanliness: other than the oddly-positioned recharging station, the rest of his room remained in order. The oblong dual portraits of him posing with fellow Autobots still were glued firmly to the alloyed wall, and the two tables often used for board games were still placed correctly in the topmost left portion of his chambers, accompanied by two diminutive steel chairs. Of course, it had helped that the room had little ornamentation to begin with.

Optimus grasped the ends of the recharging station, tilting it upwards, against its natural range of motion and in the process of doing so, heard several _crunches _as bolts popped out of their openings.

He had broken it before. Every so often, perhaps once every week, the exact same vision would come to him. He had made extensive studies into so-called human concepts, "dreams", but had so far only felt a cautious fear towards them. The very idea of a subconscious processor, a hidden yet savage part of the neuron drive, was unnerving. He knew the crackling blue orb spinning excitedly beneath his windowed chest gave him the power to feel and understand... but it had always remained under his control. Engaging in the dream, by logical consequence, was then very much like being trapped underneath the control of a deadly virus – eager to plumb and destroy, heedless to the needs of its very, very doomed host.

_Crinch._

Certainly almost half of the proper foundation of the recharging station was twisted out of range now, but at least it remained upright. Anxiously, he peeked underneath the cracked back, breathing normally afterwards. The main recharging hub, while damaged with two bolts seared from the motion, remained intact and functioning. As long as the dim magenta light was blinking, he would able to use this station. He could lie back down, let the electricity flow through his processor and overwhelm him in gentle slumber but -

_No._

At least he was not constrained by human imperfections, such as the struggle to sleep after a nightmare occurred. In a completely non-arrogant manner (he assured himself), he noted that the Transformers possessed an emotional detachment superior to humans. It was plausible for Optimus then, to plug back in and recharge. After all, he had received only seven cycles of recharging, whilst Cybertron remained in darkness for another five until Bumblebee would return tiredly from the Gate to hand it off to another poor bot.

_Bumblebee._

It was stupid. It was truly stupid, but Optimus found himself sprinting out of the cramped chamber. The speed at which he ran, he might have accidentally torn through the scaffolding lining the Recharging Station Section. It was vaguely quiet anyway, as all around him quiet buzzing of electricity flowing into Autobot drives and small creaking occurred as they autonomously defragmented.

The Section was enormous; swirling staircases of spiral chambers, nearly identical to Optimus' own, stood above the lone elevator in the center of his vision. There were large steps that transported bots from floor of recharging stations to floor, but the elevator occupying the center spiral did not allow movement between the Station itself... only to other parts of the Base. He grew bored just looking at the fuzzy grayness, resolving to step into the elevator and meet Bumblebee. Optimus started his walk towards the elevator, thinking privately to request Ratchet for a room reassignment. He was not a coward, but he definitely was cautious.

. . .

"Well, that's useless."

Optimus watched Arcee idly chuck a spare servo laying in the exhaustive heat as the massive greenhouse gas effect, strengthened by dense cloud formations stretching across Cybertron's horizon, beat down on his sensors. He _loathed _being outside the Base, even for scouting purposes, which this task did not even qualify as. Even the cracked brown rubble at his feet seemed to be protesting – it swelled and expanded, forming new cracks and creating tall spires of twisted mineral. It was possible, in a distant manner, to re-alloy these mineral formations becoming more populous on Cybertron, but the level of production needed... massive reservoirs of metal, Energon... it was near impossible. Half of the planet was reverting to it's organic state, elements and compounds converting into their raw constitutes, and thus this was entirely normal – or at least, what was _now _normal.

"Kid, I think you should be melted down for scrap metal! Oh wait no, you're better than that... how about re-purposed as a microwave?"

The heat itself was unbearable – listening to Ratchet argue with Void was, if possible, even more excruciating. To his immense boredom, Optimus watched Arcee ignore his covert chassis language and kick around a medium-sized boulder roughly the size of her foot. Thus, she was equally useless.

"Did you know that there are black holes that surpass your age?"

There was a tiny portion of Optimus that wanted him to tell off Void for blatantly disrespecting Ratchet's authority, but he remained keen on being out of the crossfire. Besides, it was entirely likely that Ratchet would start insulting _him_ at some point, which then he would be forced to respond anyway.

"Is that all you have? _I'm old _jokes? I bet even with those fancy wings you crash into boulders all the time! In fact, I'm going to degrade you from microwave possibility into light bulb possibility!"

Optimus snickered. It was quite long, but the delivery was excellent and Ratchet's sense of humor was beginning to throw off Void's charisma.

"Think that's funny, Prime?"

Expecting this fully, Optimus stood up from his resting position against a large metallic beam and turned to face Ratchet. Void seemed all together composed, although the frustration of failure was beginning to sink in quickly in his young features.

"No," he lied wearily. "Any more ship parts you and proto found?"

Optimus grinned as Void opened his mouth in protest before being cut off by Ratchet.

"Nothing so far," Ratchet diminished, rubbing a rough finger over his brows. "We could certainly fail faster if you two would put some work in."

Optimus exchanged glances with Arcee.

"Apologies," he quickly stated, brushing past Ratchet to stand next to Void. "You can help Arcee."

Arcee extended her middle finger towards Optimus, who smiled and turned to face Void.

"What have you discovered so far?"

"Um," Void stuttered, again thrown off by Optimus' close proximity to him. "Well I found a nuclear generator and some proton emissions."

"That's barely anything..." Optimus complained, touching the parts Void found with disappointment. These were auxillary pieces that were not crucial to the building of a ship, and their states were dismal as well. Dirty, rusted and emitting jolts of electricity... sure-fire signs of unreliable equipment.

"And what did you find?"

Optimus ignored Void. The garbage pile he had unthinkingly agreed to examine was large and heavy. It lacked a cohesive shape and contained very few markers for Autobot remnants, instead containing rusted F.L. and broken Energon cans. It was rare anyway for one to find ship parts in I-Omega, which according to Arcee did not possess anything worthy of keeping. She, with all her intellectual prowess and deft size, had only brought back two Energon containers. With Optimus' lumbering fingers and Void's lack of attention, there was absolutely no hope of finding anything ship-worthy. Ratchet's historically poor navigation had set them off course as well... instead of routing them to a dirty but plentiful (in resources) intersection filled with piles of garbage, he had instead taken the liberty to lead them directly into a break away street, metal layers and buildings yielding to organic constructions. Vast rocky ground, giant boulders, and dust (just being born) surrounded them. The nearest instance of metal would be nearly a 30 megacycle drive... back the way they came.

"What's the ship for, anyway?" he inquired of Void, digging through the center of the garbage pile in the hope of stumbling upon a large piece.

"Getting off Cybertron," Void simply returned, slashing away at the surface level. "You know, blast off and - "

"Where would you go?" Optimus asked, confused. He tore through some more layering.

"Probably another planet. Try to find places like Cybertron that can sustain Autobot life."

Optimus chuckled, batting away a hungry F.L.I.D nudging into his shoulder.

"There is _no _other planet like Cybertron," he declared, becoming annoyed and smacking the F.L.I.D against the spacious mineral ground. "Well, except for - "

Optimus looked at Void, who instantly understood and turned his head downward.

" - you know," Optimus assumed simply. "But that's gone."

Void laughed nervously, unsure of where to proceed after this. He dove into the center along with Optimus' hands, fumbling around for another piece.

"I'm already searching here," Optimus whispered with restrained annoyance. "Put your claws somewhere else."

Void gulped and emitted a static, wailing noise before hastily retracting his arms. Optimus watched him stumble his way to the other side of the pile, hiding his face behind a broken Energon capsule.

"Prime!"

That was almost inevitably good news. Ratchet seldom addressed Optimus with such incessant urgency, and even in those rare cases he would usually attach some expletive to the end of it. This statement was purposefully clean and respectful, a definite signal that Optimus' attention was needed. He dug out from beneath the garbage pile and briskly jaunted over to Ratchet, smartly avoiding Arcee's purposefully outstretched leg. She was a pathetic liar, and the forewarning beaming from her face displayed any suppressed emotions she might have attempted to shield.

"What?" Optimus bluntly stated, looking at Ratchet's empty, cupped palms. "Your hands."

Ratchet smirked and wiggled his hands forward. "Look closely Prime."

Optimus bent down to extend his face closer to inspect Ratchet's palms. Abruptly, his nose crushed against itself, earning a brief wincing snarl from Optimus. It was unable to go any further, seemingly halted by the air of Ratchet's palm.

"What the - "

"Engine parts Prime," Ratchet lectured, his voice taking on a derisive growl, as if he was talking to an extremely stupid protoform. "Surely you remember they have an invisible button."

"_An invisible button?"_

Optimus sighed as Void's boisterous footsteps jaunted themselves into his auditory cannals.

"Stupid idea," he informed Optimus. "Why would they make engine parts invisible?"

Ratchet growled again, carelessly stepping on Arcee's leg. Even though even his half-offline sensors had surely heard the crunching metal, he did not bother to apologize to the small blue Autobot. Optimus suppressed a grin carefully, but not before she saw it and again repeated her finger gesture.

"Don't forget kid," Ratchet prodded, tapping Void's silver rimmed chest. "We're doing this for you."

"I didn't insult you though," Void countered. "I'm just saying that's a stupid name."

Ratchet guffawed, nudging Optimus painfully on the abdominals. "_Stupid name?_ What kind of moron names a proto _Void_? That's not even a proper name!"

With that, Ratchet again shoved his elbow sprocket into Optimus' midsection. Optimus' first instinct was to twist the old arm out of proportion and throw the old bot several hundred feet away. His second instinct, far more submissive and pathetic, urged him to give Ratchet a fake laugh.

"A ha, a ha," Optimus started, with as much rigid forcefulness as he could muster. "Yes, old friend."

"Ha!"

Optimus turned away from the again arguing pair, turning his retinas to the sky where his engine began pumping oil erratically.

_Clouds._

There were not ordinary formations of gaseous substances and harmless minerals. There were structures twisted into malevolence, shaped so jaggedly and roughly that their very demeanor was intimidating. They were mushed into one another, puffs of brown squeezing together to build into a giant, floating mass of crackling energy. It steadily grew larger, first eclipsing the distant sight of asteroids, then a tenth of the sky, then, to Optimus' horror, a _fifth_ of the sky.

_The magic number._

"Fuck, fuck, fuck - "

He had to act quickly. There would be little time from now, internally hating himself for not noticing it before hand.

"Bots, bots!" he screamed at the arguing pair, wedging himself powerfully in between the two smaller Autobots. "Look up!"

Even though he had directly told this to these two first, Arcee was the first to react. She looked up rather slowly, almost with fear, gazing at the sky for several moments before turning her head sharply down and sprinting to the nearest garbage pile, diving into it. Ratchet and Void, who had just processed the circumstances, gaped at her rapid movement. She seemed highly surprised.

"Move you dumb fucks!" she roared from beneath the garbage pile.

The cloud formation was building. It eclipsed their view, extending its massive, depressing gloominess over nearly a fourth of the sky, rumbling with animosity. Optimus slapped Void across the back of the head roughly.

"Move proto! Move!"

Optimus noted Void's temporary comatose state, frozen into place as the awe gradually set itself in. He clenched the wing in his right hand, running to the second garbage pile with gusto, dragging Void along with him.

"Wait! Where did Ratc - "

Optimus ignored this, seeing the selfish medic stuff himself deeper into the garbage pile, well into the center. In another situation, seeing the old bot try to burrow his misshapen self into the ground might have been seen as slightly comical. Yet Optimus knew the fear he possessed... it was an instinctive, painful caution.

"Get inside!" he commanded to Void, who obeyed him without question.

His large bulk was a notable disadvantage. Void and Ratchet were more than capable of squeezing themselves into a garbage pile, but Optimus was nearly as tall as it and almost half as wide. If he attempted to enter, the entire structure might come wobbling down and eventually expose all three of them -

"Get in Prime!"

He had to. It was either standing outside waiting to die, or jumping inside with the chance of surviving. And so, he furiously leaped into the lowest center of the pile, feeling his weighty chassis disrupt the gentle equilibrium the pieces were stacked on top in. He had swooped in quickly enough however, as just before the entire structure fell, it landed squarely on his back. The load was light and soft, as he was aided by Void and Ratchet who were similarly holding up the weight. He forced his torso to face them.

"Why the hell are we doing this?"

Optimus sniffed with disgust, a nearby undergarment hanging three inches from his face.

"Wait for it..."

Using his hands, he pushed out a small cannister that was not supporting any weight. It gave him a small window into the outside. Void moved his head ever so closer to Optimus' own, still waiting for something to happen outside.

_Splash._

Thick, heavy splashes of liquid. These were not erupting from the ground, rather they were falling directly from the sky and onto the crusted mineral floor. They did not break apart as they collided loudly with it. Instead, the ground itself stretched revoltingly sideways as the liquid drenched itself into the brown rubble. Pores and openings, fizzing and bubbling with dark green liquid, emitted small bursts of noxious gas floating dangerously close to Optimus' own retinal sensors.

"What the hell... are those?"

Optimus took a moment to calm his engine down and consider a firm response to Void's question.

"Fluroantimonic acid," Optimus responded, backing away as another large blob began tearing through the hard ground. "Highly volatile."

"Holy fuck - " Void gasped, watching the metal container Optimus discarded vaporize under a heavy spurt of liquid. "Can't we build something to protect us?"

"It rips through everything," Optimus advised. "Too strong for anything we can build."

Void scoffed, regaining a small bit of his usual brazen confidence. "Come on, you bots can't - "

_Fizzing_. Optimus closed his retinas in complete stillness, hearing the sound creep through above him. The fizzing intensified as the liquid was surely making its way down the pile.

"Oh Primus - " Void stopped, staring upwards into the pile with nervous glances. "How long till it reaches us?"

"Long enough," Optimus fired back. "These things never go on for long."

"How can you be sure?" Void mused, huddling closer to the center of the pile, although he found it difficult to move because of the weight and the fear that held him in place. Optimus stared firmly at the young bot, absorbing the green retinas once more.

"Do you trust me?"

Void stopped trying to get to the center of the pile, closing his eyes and imprisoning those green retinas once more. His spark was pulsating more furiously than it had ever done in his life cycle. The fizzing noise was becoming more apparent, and to Optimus' great discomfort, spreading closer and more loudly to Void's trapped position.

He asked again. "Proto, do you trust me?"

Void bit his mouth in sheer frustration, agonized by the louder fizzing noises making their ominous way closer to his audio sensors.

"Oh Primus no, no, no... not like this - "

"PROTO! DO YOU TRUST ME?"

The fizzing was too loud. Much too powerful. Just out of the corner of his vision, although he wished with all his willpower that he would be blinded right now and could not see it, was a trickling dark-green trail of liquid, sliding down a metallic beam smoothly... shifting closer to Void's still shut eyes.

"PROTO!"

Void opened his eyes, revealing the brilliant green sensors again. Optimus examined them determinedly, noting the distinct contrast of greens. One symbolized death, while the other...

Void's eyes shut once more. He began to slowly nod. The dark liquid was four inches away...

"Get out of the way!"

Ratchet, strangely light-footed for his old age, dove headlong into Void's chest, shoving him out of the way. The two chassis burst away the remnant pieces of garbage, tumbling into the mineral floor. Optimus watched in horror as they rolled across the ground.

"NO!"

Suddenly he stopped screaming. The dark green splashes were no longer littering the space, and the massive cloud above his shoulders was shrinking, diminishing and swiftly compressing. Gradually, it allowed more light to filter in from above Optimus, then more, then it took up only a tenth of the sky, before receding into distant vision and out of sight.

The weight was beginning to hurt his back. With an enormous leverage, he pushed the injured forearms upwards at the largest piece of metal he could find, feeling the weight above him move in protest. Optimus took the opportunity and flew from beneath the garbage pile, similarly tumbling across the ground floor.

"You – you - " he addressed Ratchet, who was already standing up and stretching out his aged motors. " - Have better eyes than me."

"Of course I do," Ratchet snorted. Optimus closed his eyes in relief as Arcee emerged to his left, nudging him gently on the elbow.

"Fucking close, eh?" she questioned, Optimus sighing for perhaps the hundredth time. She took notice of this immediately.

"Sorry, sorry, no more fucks..."

Optimus extended a hand toward the still immobile Void, coughing as the slightly toxic dust flashed into his clearly unaccustomed throat lining.

"Thanks," Void grasped the significantly larger hand, pulling himself to his feet. He stared at Optimus' blue sensors. "And, _thanks_."

Optimus nodded his head, turning back to Ratchet.

"So did the ship parts make it?" he hopefully put out there, completely aware of how foolhardy the question was.

"Not Void's crap," Ratchet admonished, rudely kicking the rusted metal pieces away from him. "But our stuff luckily rolled to a nearby rock. It has some cosmetic damage, but nothing that should keep it from functioning..."

Ratchet looked confusedly at Void, evidently expecting a retort but hearing none.

"Looks like your vocal processor finally died out," he informed Void, flicking his head. "Guess we can finally melt you down after all."

Optimus laughed.

"That's it," he finished, signaling Arcee to contact Base. "We should turn back."

"Yeah, I agree with Optimus," Void called out, cheekily offering Arcee a rusted metal tin before she playfully slapped it away from his hands. "I think we should probably go."

"Wuss Autobot," Ratchet grumbled, still trying to instigate a response. "Head's so far up your exhaust port quivering with fear... _Oh, I'm Void and I'm scared of a little rain, oh boo hoo_..."

Optimus smiled again, watching Void refuse to respond. He walked over to Optimus, turning to look at Ratchet as well.

"Old cunt," he described. "Aging piece of shit."

"Language," Optimus wearily advised. "He is a senior officer."

"That's what I said, didn't I?" Void replied, scrunching his features in a mockingly perplexed manner. "Old cunt."

Optimus sighed.

"No wonder you ended up like this..."

Optimus heard a brief, struggling gasp from Void, but did not bother to look back. In the far extent of his vision, the receding cloud was drifting peacefully away, straying close to buildings and large canyons of boulders, burying them all in its massive black shadows.

. . .

For a space so relatively large by Cybertronian standards, there was a profound deficiency of sizable movement. It was not so much that there were physical boundaries inhibiting movement – indeed, the limestone walls were placed at least seven feet away from him. Even the low ceiling did not trouble his movement... it was the atmosphere, the peculiar pungency wafting indecisively towards him that was truly unbearable. It was a tedious, painful asphyxiation. If suffocation was an end, then this thick brown dust would be his means.

Megatron pinched his shoulder sprockets together, staring fixedly at the roof. Starscream was either wrestling a black hole or performing vigorous calisthenics. Traisl of particulates danced down to Megatron's nasal cavity, disrupted from their position from the constant thumping above them. The noise intensified on the trap door.

Megatron leaned forward, experiencing a brief draining sensation as the splendorous warmth left the back of his head. He pushed himself off the recharging station with one drowsy arm, swiveling the other to push up the trap door. To his great exasperation, a flurry of light and racuous laughter withered angrily in the frigid weather. Hauling himself into the blinding luminescence, Megatron scooted both legs above the trap door in a rather undignified fashion. He quickly kicked at the door, hearing it _clack _warmly with the grimy hinges.

"Turn it off," he bequeathed, moving to grab the nearest chair next to him.

"Your fem-bot came in the middle of the night," Starscream informed him at once, flinging the pot carelessly at Megatron, who had since acclimated to Starscream's capricious method of oil serving. "She asked about your whereabouts."

Megatron gulped a large quantity of oil, deeply wishing it to clog his memory core and completely force him to babble nonsense.

"And?" he inquired.

"And I lied," Starscream finished. "Told her you'd gone to the local oil bar."

"You fool," he whispered. Megatron stood up powerfully, dropping the small can with negligence. "That's no place for a fem-bot."

"Sexism," Starscream smirked. "That's a human concept."

"That's logic," Megatron countered. "She can't interact with those types of bots..."

"Judging as well..." Starscream continued.

Angered, he clenched his right fist and swung wildly, still uncoordinated from the discharge, at Starscream's large jaw. The punch however, missed completely as a far stronger force, powerful and viscous smashed into his side. The metal squeezed inordinately inward, mushing into the tender fabric trailing across the rimmed chest. Megatron found himself staring at the trap door once more, collapsed to his knees and thoroughly winded.

"The big fella says that you and him have something to still settle," Starscream smiled, allowing Dreadwing's large frame to enter from behind the shadows, still untouched by the morning rays of light. At once after seeing Dreadwing, Megatron visibly felt the tiny house expand and grow, as if the immense power of the Decepticon towering over him was too large for the asteroid world to contain.

"Where's the ships?" Starscream asked, disregarding Dreadwing's now chokehold on Megatron's battered neck.

"I - I - "

"Loosen up Dread," Starscream slurred. "He might go offline before I finish asking."

"You – you - "

"You were an idiot," he insulted Megatron. "Always an idiot. Always thinking we're bot-buddies and all. But in the end... I'm all business."

"I don't know - "

Dreadwing's grip tightened, and half of Megatron's field of vision was darkening.

"Of course you know," Starscream twitched. "My F.L.I.D on your back caught some signal that you stored inside your memory core. Something."

"I - "

"Idiot."

Dreadwing tightened even more, and by now all of Megatron's sight vanished. His form crumpled on the floor immediately, and swift kicks to both of his sides arrived. His left rib was tingling with pain, but it could not be compared to the massive, bludgeoning pressure erupting again and again on his right. Warm liquid at once pooled in his throat lining, desperately trying to flush out. Slender blue trails trickled out from the corner of his jaw.

Blue. What a stupid color.

* * *

**A/N**

**I love being gradual and having some flexibility! So much details and plot goodies to come... It's a large story, and that gives me a lot of creative freedom... so thank you , fans, non-fans, and everyone else... and of course, the Transformers. To be honest, considering the level of interest I have right now, it could end up being much more than 600k words... (a million, anyone?)**

**Some people have been confused on who the protagonist is. While that specific decision is ultimately interpretive, Optimus is the primary view-point character (in general, I focus on Autobots a bit more than Decepticons) although who's the "hero of the story", the "main guy", etc. is essentially a reader choice. **

**One might find Optimus' story interesting, Megatron's, Void's, Starscream's, Arcee... (even this specific order means nothing, I assure you :) )**

**One of the main themes I wanted to get out in this story is the realism of life. Life doesn't have main heroes centered in every single scenario, so nor will my story... **

**Whew, that's a long note! Well, R/R, review (yes I know that's redundant :p) and enjoy the reading!**

_**~Frax**_


	5. Discoloration

"Well?"

To be perfectly fair to himself, the color she chose was extremely repulsive and quite painful to look at in terms of aesthetics... sharing this to Arcee was foolish however, so against his better (or worse) judgment he chose to offer a terrible, stupidly worded prevarication

"Amazing," Optimus stated bluntly, choosing to inflect it with a tinge of enthusiasm. "Outstanding design."

Arcee rocked back on forth on her heels, smiling at the blue and gold stripes running vertically down her chassis. Optimus chuckled softly as her form resembled a massive Earth organism: a peacock. Indeed, her slim outline brushed by the cool colors glittered brightly and rather extravagantly. And like a peacock, she seemed out of place: while she gleamed with colorful light, the surrounding walls of the Medical Lab droned with monotony. The gray metal rectangles all around her provided a peculiar contrast, a terrible ugliness that he struggled to suppress from erupting from his vocal processors.

"Wait a nanoclick," Arcee fired back. "You really mean that?"

Optimus knew this was a probing question, intending to investigate whether he had actually been paying attention to all her new paint jobs scanned from Ratchet's holographic storage. Again, repressing his more intellectual side, he urged a retort.

"Of course," he added with dramatic gesticulation. "I always - "

"Oh fuck you," Arcee groaned, achieving the suspected response. Optimus felt the need to shift her anger and translate that into fuel for his replies.

"Can you please," he whispered, scratching sorely at his cracked right antenna poised above his auditory canal, "just once, not use such profanity?"

Arcee guffawed. "Fuck, cunt, shit, bitc - "

Optimus frowned beforehand, but Arcee suddenly ceased her usage of expletives to a glistening display present on the holographic monitor. This particular design was reddish with maroon stripes, a stark contrast to her blue, dashing color scheme. She tapped it hurriedly, and furiously scanned the massive relay of numbers that sprung into view. Seamlessly, her chassis adapted and took on a different hue. Instead of the dark, satin-esque blue that previously streamlined her form, her chassis now had bright red, colorful and moving cover all sides of her body. The red was quite bright, reflecting back nearly all light that fell on it. It was somewhat bothersome to look at, but after the initial shock was processed... an illuminating, authoritative color stood out.

"How about this?" she asked, smiling proudly up at him.

Optimus laughed in disbelief, walking closer to Arcee to examine her petite form now shadowed by his frame. He observed the excellent color symmetry and vivid red light reflection.

"It's beautiful," he noted. "Very much _you_." And before he could stop himself, he felt compelled to ask, "But I thought you despised traditional notions of femininity?"

Arcee sighed, expecting the question but lacking an appropriate, logical answer. "I've been... blue, my entire life. I'm just getting a change of pace."

"Or rather, a hue."

"Yes," she remarked, chuckling as she oscillated on the balls of her feet, admiring her new form in the highly reflective monitor. "Remind me to thank Ratchet."

"Maybe I should," Optimus warned, frowning as he took a glance at the back of her neck lining, slick with rusted blue cavities. He pressed it lightly with the tip of two of his thick fingers, disregarding Arcee twitching in pain. "I thought you said on the drive back to Base that you weren't touched by the acid shower."

She grumbled and kept her anger focused on the monitor, unwilling or ashamed to turn it on Optimus. "I lied."

"Of course," Optimus let out, turning to grab a bottle of liquid next to the monitor and a fine sliver of metal resembling a needle.

He made sure to avoid any of the painful bits, although this was difficult as the cavities were lodged deep inside the back of her neck. She let out a hiss every now and then, but for the most part the slim metal was proving to react quite well with the corroded armor, combining with the liquid oil composite in the bottle to create small, netted layering over the holes. Consistently, the craters were being closed off and covered by fibrous white nets.

"Something wrong?" Optimus asked, tilting the needle into the corner of a particularly resistant cavity. "You would usually make this more difficult for me."

"Do you ever think," Arcee started, seemingly searching her processor for appropriate words, "that you're going offline every day?"

Optimus maneuvered his way around a painful cavity. "No. If I did, I would have been offline long ago."

"Funny concept, death," she continued. "How can they believe in something after _this_? I mean... we're both just organic matter... just lose our spark or in their case, a heartbeat or pulse, then..."

He used a small white rag to dab at the back of her head. "And then?"

"I don't know. Definitely not something else. Just... it's over."

"I can see why they would hate something like that," Optimus justified, flicking the rag away from straying too close to her ear. "Losing things is painful."

"It's not that," she argued, twitching once more. "They can deal with loss. I just can't deal with... uncertainty. I hate not knowing. I _hate _being in the dark."

"I thought you meant _they_," Optimus wisely intruded. Arcee gave no answer.

"The Well of Allsparks," Optimus supplied, noting her discomfort. "Don't you believe in that?"

"I'm supposed to."

"But you don't _believe_ in it, do you?"

"I - " she broke off, letting her head go down. "I don't want to believe things. I want to _know _things."

"Arrogance," he attempted, earning a slight chuckle from her. "Typical."

"Still," she began, "would be nice to know."

"What if it's all over? What if at the end there's no new beginning? We just... end."

She mused over this. "Finality. Termination... I guess I would be okay, if I _knew _that's what would happen."

"But you don't," Optimus reasoned. "And even if you did... I don't think you'd like it."

Arcee smiled slightly.

"We don't look for answers Arcee," he offered. "We're looking for reassurance."

Optimus was happy to see that the makeshift stitches were holding up against her gradual head gyrations, and placed the sliver of metal and bottle on top of their usual places. It was becoming quite late. Recharging periods were only three cycles away, and it was his turn to man the Gate. Technically, he should have relieved Bumblebee about half a cycle ago, but the Gate's rumbling noises and residual moving meant that the poor bot was defiantly refusing to leave his post... even if his replacement had not arrived yet.

"Then reassure me," Arcee whispered softly, turning around to face his distracted expression with confidence. "We already ended. Now let's - "

"What do you mean _we ended?_" he inquired of Arcee. "253 of us are still alive. Even after... Earth. The Decepticons, while forever out of our lives, still exist. Somewhere on the asteroid."

"That we banished them too," Arcee broke in, taking a chance. "That we _doomed _them to."

"They chose it," Optimus spit back harshly. "They _chose _stupidity over pragmatism. They were caught up in their idealized lives. They were caught up in their pain. We did not. We moved on."

"Have we?" she queried. "Look around Optimus. We haven't moved anywhere. For a long, long, long time."

Optimus sighed and turned away from her. "We are surviving. We are getting by."

"Oh fuck that sh - " she announced, before Optimus' angered state silenced her.

"Arcee - "

"Optimus," she pleaded, pressing her hands into the windows in his chest. "I don't want to survive. I want to live. I don't want to get by. I want to thrive. I want to start fres- "

"Cybertron is not fresh," Optimus interrupted. "It's old."

"So are you," she mentioned rather silently. "And yet... here we are. Waiting for you to make a move."

Optimus felt his retinal sensors crumple inward, closing off all visual output.

"I am no longer a Prime," he stated blankly. "I am nothing to anyone except another bot."

"The title may be gone... the bureaucracy of it all may be extinct... but the bot is still there."

Optimus gathered enough courage to fire back. "What can we make from all this?" He bit furiously. "What can we build from broken metal and rocks?"

"I don't know," she supplied. "But we can try."

Optimus huffed in annoyance, growling under his breath as Arcee continued to attempt to elicit a response from him.

"I have to take over for the Gate."

Optimus turned away, feeling the wonderful, small pressure leave his chest but resolutely plowing through the archway into the misty darkness.

"The Decepticons are gone," Arcee shouted, forcing the red robot to stop walking away. "Cybertron is ours. We finally have a home. Isn't this all what you wanted?"

And, with a vicious, hurtful sarcasm: "Victory, Optimus?"

He clenched his oral gears together. "Not like this."

Arcee watched him stride away, feeling sentiment cloud her processor and break her spirit. It was a foolish, benign feeling, but something so powerful resonated from its presence. Nostalgia. Memories. More anger.

"I thought we won," she finished.

* * *

Void sat on his legs, looking viciously up at the hulking green figure above him. In typical fashion, it was pointless to assume that it would move away by itself. If he was even slightly smarter than the behemoth now roaring above him, he would stop this whole situation immediately and admit defeat. True, it would take a sizable chunk of his self-esteem away, but at least he could be spared his punishing physical embarrassment. Of course, in an even more stupid flare, he decided to do nothing at all, as Bulkhead took advantage of his dazed look.

_Slam_. More agonizing pain. "Yeah! Bulkhead! Crush his damn tailpipe!"

_What an oddly erotic comment to make_, Void joked, trying to keep up his dull humor as the crushing pressure was shifted to his chest as he lay on his abdomen, coughing and wheezing as the ground pushed into his chest plating. Worst of all, Bulkhead was victoriously lapping around his what most bots probably presumed to be his corpse.

"That's right little proto!" the massive green bot roared, causing the light metal framework hanging above him to rumble uneasily. The booming voice echoed throughout the fragile chamber, noise reverberating off dull aluminum plating everywhere. "Never challenge the 'Bulk in the Mess!"

"Yes! 'Bulk in Mess!"

"Yes! 'Bulk in Mess!"

"Yes! 'Bulk in Mess!"

"Yes! 'Bulk in Mess!"

The crowd was perhaps worse than Bulkhead himself. Indeed, the Autobot Mess attracted all sorts of automatons: this had benefits of course, as objective, relatively easy-going bots such as Bumblebee and Wheeljack were able to cheer on participants in a wrestling match with no bias. The negative side was, with Bulkhead's impressive size and fierce strength, the rest of the bots preferred to cheer on the green mountain rather than any scrawny newcomer. This was natural of course, as Bulkhead's size also meant that if he did run into any foolhardy bots willing to actually combat him, or worse, indirectly insult him, they would be quickly dispatched. According to Void's brief memory, the worse situations had risen when Bulkhead did not understand the joke.

For the 253 Autobots that resided in the Base, the Mess supported perhaps a little less than half that number. It was a truly suffocating experience, to be deprived of quality Energon in this hostile air. It was the most torturous of environments, to be trapped in a large metal box jam-packed with Autobots onlooking two competitors in the center. It was a playful, non-lethal combat scenario, but one that unnecessarily was transformed into near-death when cheered on by a crowd. It was a spectator sport only to the outsiders, and perhaps for Bulkhead himself. For Void, it was a frantic chase that he never seemed to get out of.

"Never challenge the 'Bulk!"

Void twisted around and lunged into Bulkhead's sturdy, thick green legs. Again, if he was a smarter bot, he would have realized that Bulkhead's thigh was roughly the same circumference as Void's chest. The pain was unbearable at first, but this was replaced by a more pleasant, finalizing pressure as Bulkhead pinned him to the ground with both of his massive claws. The sharp metal dug into Void's wrist spheres, causing a subtle pain that was not so much threatening as it was humiliating.

"Never challenge the 'Bulk!"

"I get it!" Void shouted, still squirming his way underneath the heavy pillars crushing his hands.

_I think the shortening makes it even worse_, Void cursed silently.

"Give up?" Bulkhead suggested.

"Give up!" the crowd agreed in unison, screaming raucously.

"Give! Up!"

"Give! Up!"

"Give! Up!"

"Give! Up!"

"Ok, ok, ok, ok, ok!"

Void was relieved as Bulkhead emerged from the smaller bot's crushed form and stood up with pride. His barrel-like, thick chest cavity swelled with Energon pumping furiously in bursts underneath, while the block head nodded repeatedly as the crowd chanted Bulkhead's name.

He never quite feared Bulkhead regardless of the situation. Even now, he foresaw the big green hand reaching out to him in respectful confidence, and even as the massive jaw and hard features annoyed Void, the gentle eyes hidden beneath the caved in face was more calming. Void chuckled as he witnessed Bulkhead's thick fingers eat his comparatively slender digits. With a hauling motion, Void pulled himself onto his feet, taking a moment to stoop over the floor with wistful nostalgia. True, the only memory he truly had of the fight was a brief smacking, but at least Bulkhead seemed sportive about it.

"So will you ever again, challenge the 'Bulk?" Bulkhead uttered yet again.

Void laughed. "Never again." The crowd cheered.

Void put on a wide grin for Bulkhead, who caught him by the arm and pulled him roughly towards his already moving form.

"Eyyyy Bulk, you can't multiply with a fembot, so you're choosing Void?" Wheeljack broke in suddenly and rather randomly from within the crowd.

Void could tell that Bulkhead took this with a grain of salt. To his slight surprise, Bulkhead pushed through Wheeljack and Bumblebee and was subjected to the mass of jeering Autobots. Fortunately, Bulkhead's formidable size kept off most of the bots from squeezing Void, but Bulkhead's sudden dose of seriousness was more peculiar than laughing Autobots. Bulkhead rarely broke out of character, much less emphasized such an urgent walk through his fan base. Void saw him practically tear open the twin doors as the comforting yellow luminescence left him, only to be replaced by the inky darkness of nightfall. Gradually, the torrent of laughs and humming faded behind them.

"What's up with the nitrous treatment Bulk?" Void inquired carefully, still keen to first investigate rather than resume joking around. "Something up your exhaust port?"

"Void," Bulkhead grumbled, suddenly stopping in the middle of the walk to let go of Void. "Look around you."

Unsure of what he was being really asked to do, Void timidly peeked around, noticing the vast distance between the Mess and the main building of the Base. Nightfall, while very heavy and quite vision-consuming, was somewhat pleasant as all the open space and lack of an actual roof made the entire Base feel like a string of disconnected buildings, eternally but resolutely linked by infinite amounts of open mineral ground.

"Good thing there's no acid showers today," Void stated neutrally, staring at the dense, smoky atmosphere stretched lazily across Cybertron. "I'm sure you heard of me shitting my exhaust port when I was with Ratchet and Arcee yesterday."

"Haha," Bulkhead fakely gave, his big belly jutting out in humorous dramatics. "I think it's more like you just never understood what going offline means until then."

Void grinned, still patiently waiting for Bulkhead to get back on topic.

"Hey," Bulkhead finally interrupted, "those wings work?" Void shook slightly as Bulkhead grabbed both wings and shook them up and down, nearly bringing Void up to his eye level with a few quick movements.

"Theoretically, yes," Void answered. "I don't know about now. I mean... I haven't used the things in years."

"So?"

Void gulped, confused what to do now.

"So what?"

"That means they definitely worked once, right?"

Void rolled his retinas.

"Yes dumbass," he spat, making Bulkhead tilt his head stupidly to the left. "That's what that means."

"Here, I have an idea," Bulkhead replied. "Follow me."

Following Bulkhead was no easy task. Aside from the fact that he had to triple the length of his usual stride, Void also had to keep up with Bulkhead's prolonged periods of silence. Enduring the seemingly never-ending walk with absolutely no interaction whatsoever was painful enough, but it was perhaps made worse by the fact that even now he had no idea where he was going. He _could _vaguely make out a small shack huddled far away from the rest of the Autobot Base, and from where his direction was pointing him, he hoped he was getting close to it. Bulkhead seemed disinterested in telling him.

"I had like, the most crappy first recharge ever," Void remarked, still adamantly trying to re-energize Bulkhead. "I got put next to Ratchet."

"Oh... shit haha," Bulkhead laughed quite heartily, but still not looking back. "Is it true that while he recharges, you can hear the motors working?"

"That bot is ancient," Void fired back. "Probably got his spark around the same time the Big Bang happened."

"I mean, you could be worse though," Bulkhead retorted, roughly grazing his chin with the back of his forearm flexor. "You could be next to Ironhide."

"Damn," Void consoled. "But I mean with his situation and all..." He looked tentatively at Bulkhead, who was not giving any leeway. "I mean he hasn't had the greatest of..."

"Drop it," Bulkhead cut him off. "Just drop it."

"Right."

Void still needed to pace himself however. Bulkhead's gait was elongating, which meant that Void now had to jog to keep up with him, smiling as he saw the shack enlarge as they both came closer to it. Its appearance certainly was analogous to Bulkhead's: tattered, rugged, and with a faint odor of bizarre complexity.

"Autobot Void," Bulkhead rather unnecessarily quipped, halting just in time for Void to run into his broad back and collapse onto the hard mineral floor. "I present to you... the shack."

_Of course_, Void thought.

"What's inside it?" Void continued.

"The greatest piece of junk you will ever lay sensors on," Bulkhead praised.

Void was thoroughly confused. The rusted brown shack was not much larger than Bulkhead himself, and anything worth hiding in such a degenerate storage facility probably was not important enough for Void to be burning midnight cycles for.

_Cycles I could be spending getting short-circuited with Hot Rod_, Void mused.

"If you're thinking of getting short-circuited," Bulkhead intelligently predicted, "don't. The Energon they use is a bit too strong for small to medium bots like you."

Void scoffed, but Bulkhead progressed anyways. "Doesn't affect bigger bots like me, but you, you..."

And he trailed off, leaving to Void to speculate what could possibly be stronger than the Energon he had with Hot Rod that night. If it wasn't for Ratchet's careful scanners and violent bouts of grumpiness, he might have never been processor-strong enough to go ship-hunting with Arcee and Opti -

He sighed.

"Damn it," Void whispered.

"What was that?"

Void quickly realized the situation. "Nothing Bulk." Void smirked once more. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to get in?"

Void suppressed a mad desire to burst out guffawing, as he surveyed Bulkhead pushing hard on the front wall of the what appeared to be completely closed off shack.

"You're supposed to make entrances Bulk," he sarcastically suggested. "So what, you break down the wall every time you wanna go find your _Fembots Gone Wild _magazine?"

"That's not a real thing," Bulkhead assured him. "Bumblebee's been lying to you."

Void was prepared to supply another retort, but was stopped in his tracks as with a massive effort, Bulkhead managed to thrust open the front wall. Instead of breaking down, the top part of the wall remained stagnant and rotated inwards, while the rest of the wall cleanly separated from the edges of the shack and curved inward.

"You – you..." Void laughed, still grinning from Bulkhead's tactic. "Built a doggy door?"

"Hmph," Bulkhead moved away, "I like it more."

"Suits your type..."

Void began the walk inside, brushing aside sharp edges of jagged metal as Bulkhead stood to the side, with both the intelligence and finesse of a cliff side. The overall atmosphere was suffocating enough, but something dead-center of the pervasive blindness caught his attention. Void squinted in disgust as he saw the rotting carcass of metal pooled a measurable distance away from him, shadowed by thick darkness.

"Good thing you don't have any windows here," Void thanked, hearing the door slam shut behind him. "Otherwise the light might show your excretion."

"It's not shit moron," Bulkhead reprimanded. "It's an old F.L.I.D I managed to keep in suspension."

Intrigued, Void walked closer to the F.L.I.D and bent down. The disproportionate teeth sitting on its tiny jaws were cracked and half missing, and the ovular body was no longer emitting an annoying buzzing sound. He tried to read the miniscule inscription on it's back, but the pervading lack of light inside the shack made this difficult. Additionally, beams of mineral dust, now clogging up his internal gears, made it even more difficult to communicate in any reconcilable way.

He mused over why Bulkhead would choose such a dismal shack. Indeed, not only did he choose this smelly hovel, but also used it in order to house an even more degenerate host. A half-broken, rusted F.L.I.D was nothing to be proud of or even remotely enjoy, and perhaps worse than the crusted remnant was the enthusiasm and secrecy Bulkhead took to Void. This merited neither attention nor curiosity – and it seemed very much like an elaborate prank Bulkhead would deliberately pull to make Void laugh. Void broke into a frown as he tried to imagine the correct expletive to use for this particular, surreal scenario.

"Yeah, well, if you dragged me out here in the middle of the night for this..." Void began.

"You challenged me, remember?" Bulkhead reminded.

"I did it as a joke," Void justified. "Besides, I never knew you would treat me like a 'Con."

"You deserved it," Bulkhead replied savagely. "Asshole."

"I guess."

Void chuckled for a while, before standing up to look Bulkhead square in the face.

"I'm surprised you blended in so quick with the bots here," Bulkhead expressed, contorting his nose into a twisted helix. "They aren't usually kind to bots they haven't known for thousands of stellar cycles."

Void nodded his head. "I didn't think so either."

"Well, guess you broke through anyway, right?" Bulkhead praised, patting him on the back with enough force to make Void nearly fall over. "No harm done."

"Yeah, I guess... Not so bad..."

"The reason I brought you here is because if you hook up the F.L.I.D with wings," Bulkhead hypothesized, "the thing will fly again. I can use it to my advantage."

"Idiot," Void stated. "You fuc - "

"I don't mean rip off yours and give it to this Void," Bulkhead broke in hastily. "I mean let the F.L.I.D scan you and get a 3D model going. In a couple cycles it should be able to finish building it."

"Oh," Void let out. He turned his back to the F.L.I.D, pressing it on its chest to activate it's scanning response. A dull _whirr _started. "What are you going to use it for?"

"I have ideas," Bulkhead smiled. "Grandiose plans."

"Right," Void uttered with absolutely no confidence. "You make plans."

The whirring noise was becoming intensely bothersome. The F.L.I.D was obviously too damaged to make the scans as efficient as Void would have liked it to be, and Bulkhead was constantly peeking out the door. This forebode terrible things, and Void re-examined whether this particular behavior was allowed at night time.

"Are we allowed to do this?" Void asked, watching Bulkhead's thoroughly amusing nervous tics.

"Lay off," Bulkhead announced in annoyance. "I'm into fembots for Primus' sake."

"No," Void insisted. "I mean, are we allowed to do this fixing thing at this _time _of night?"

Bulkhead looked back at Void with a stupid grin on his features. _"_What do you mean, are we_ allowed_?"

Void coughed a little, letting the dust finally catch up to his vocal processor.

"There are no rules Void," Bulkhead informed him. "There's no command structure. Our days are just shit."

Void chuckled. "I get the routine. Wake up, find supplies, recharge."

Bulkhead nodded in agreement. "Nobody can tell anyone what to do. Because, well... nobody's anybody. Do you get me?"

"Yeah..." Void agreed, shifting his back slightly down as the F.L.I.D's weakening scanning array nearly fell off Void's form. He bit his mouth, actually tried to stop it from coming out his voice box, but relented: "Not even Optimus?"

Bulkhead closed his eyelids and shook his head, furrowing his eyebrows in disgust. "Optimus is an Autobot. He doesn't have anything over us."

Void unwittingly let out another involuntary sigh.

"What is it?" Bulkhead pushed, now genuinely interested in Void. "You keep sighing randomly."

"Nothing," Void ended, closing his eyes to remember the end of the ship-hunting day. "When is this shitty thing going to finish scanning?"

"Give it a break," Bulkhead reasoned. "We're lucky it even powered on."

"Of course..."

The overall process was as tedious as it was long. The F.L.I.D's half-jittery scanner barely managed to keep up with scanning Void, who did his absolute best to stay as still as possible while it made its lazy take of Void's wings.

He wondered if Bulkhead knew what time it was. Granted, everything he had said about Autobot life had been exactly as described, but he could not shake off a feeling of visceral danger approaching. There was no harm in staying out past recharging time, considering the fact that they were both fully-functioning Autobots with no real rules or procedures to follow. However, the fact that he was with Bulkhead meant that he was away from time he could have spent gathering ship parts. It was pointless to try and convince Ratchet that Cybertron was a dead prospect... indeed, with both major factions of autonomous beings now truly secluded, it seemed pertinent to explore other options.

He knew nothing of Earth of course. Nor did most of the Autobots, although Ratchet and Ironhide had hinted several times to not ask the question. He was not sure why they chose to keep in their sentiment and retain emotional ties with Earth when there were so many new, exciting new worlds to uncover. Their existences were uncertainties of course, but anything would trump Cybertronian life – even if he was fully-functioning, every day felt more like a prolonged, laborious death trot rather than living. Whether or not who would choose to go with him was irrelevant. He was leaving Cybertron, and all of it's prehistoric people behind.

_Pity_, Void observed. _To live in the past_...

"It's done," Bulkhead cheered, shoving Void across the dank space as he bent down to gently rotate the F.L.I.D in his servos. "I'll give it a recharge first. Testing will be tomorrow."

"So..." Void trailed off, squinting in anger. "I came here for nothing?"

"Patience," Bulkhead advised. "You gotta learn it."

"Mhm."

Just after Bulkhead delivered the sentence, a small creaking noise could be clearly discerned as the huge swiveling door rotated upward. Void at once threw his hands instinctively to shield his face, but the force that entered was neither intimidatingly heavy nor humorously light. And the swiveling door remained nearly parallel to the floor, propped up by a bulky red cuboid sprouting five silver phalanges. Although he was completely shrouded by black waves of darkness, the broad outline and tall frame of Optimus Prime peered curiously into the cramped space.

"Does anyone know where Hot Rod might be?" he inquired, disregarding the two Autobots' perfectly still postures. "I need to talk with him."

"Haven't the slightest idea," Bulkhead fired back uselessly. "Void?"

Both Autobots turned their stares on Void, who felt uncomfortably queasy under pressure, as though he was being forcibly coerced to answer a battery of extremely difficult, unfair questions.

"Ditto," he breathed back.

"I see," Optimus analyzed, confused by the odd placement of the old F.L.I.D in the center of the two Autobots. "I apologize for bothering you two."

"We were just about to leave," Bulkhead interrupted. "We were just tinkering around. We're done though."

Void closed his eyes in relief and followed Bulkhead towards the open space shadowed by the massive door. Optimus stood to the side, clearly surprised by the sudden exit but nonetheless determined to release as little reaction as possible. As soon as Void stepped into the frosty mist, he knew that the time was not only very late for recharging, but also incredibly frigid as far as temperature was concerned. The shack was a good hundred paces from the nearest entry into main Autobot Base, then it would be at least a quarter cycle walk and settling down into his recharging station. And to cap it all, he would have to deal with an extremely irritable Ratchet, the cellmate from Earth hell who would in all likelihood,(at least, extrapolating from past behavior) terminate Void on the spot.

_Maybe I can poison him before he gets too angry_, Void planned, although he suspected the medic bot might be trained to resist poison.

Unfortunately, a fatigued Bulkhead was much more focused than Void, who was already a few paces away and rapidly walking towards the main Autobot Base, his great circular outline bouncing along with anxious although tired urgency. Void started to follow suit.

"By the way," Optimus called out, grabbing Void by the arm, turning him around slightly. "If you want to avoid Ratchet's wrath, I would recommend entering through Gate Six of the Autobot Base."

Void put on a confused look. "I thought there were only five?"

"There is six," Optimus corrected. "It's almost blended into the rust, which is why most miss it."

"What does going through a Gate have to do with me waking up Ratchet?" Void asked.

"All the other Gates have quite hollow interiors, and thus transmit noise quite easily. Particularly Gate Two" Optimus stated. "Gate Six has been re-purposed out of residual, dense mineral. It won't give off much warning to mid-recharging Autobots."

Void took a moment to ponder over this. "Thanks."

Optimus nodded briefly, expecting more conversation from Void, who instead chose to walk hurriedly away, trying to still make out Bulkhead's large form lumbering through the blindness.

The night sky was beginning to turn a powerfully vibrant shade of purple. Cybertron's atmosphere, while on most occasions drearily depressing and absolutely soul-crushing, rarely broke off from routine. This purple, as Void had inferred, had to do with both acidic rain reactions as well as random floating particulates. The source was somewhat ironic, making Void chuckle every time he conceptualized it.

Bulkhead was not in any way visible. Void knew this had nothing to do with him, but was surprised to note how quickly someone of Bulkhead's... bulk, could move so swiftly under such vision-unfriendly conditions. Void smiled as he imagined Bulkhead's processor racing with self-made images of giant barrels of Energon stored underneath his massive recharging station.

Gate Six was now directly in front of him.

It was situated, just like Optimus said, in the far most corner of the rectangular main Base. It was correctly constructed out of mostly mineral, semi-bright dashes of brownish-gray not even standing out from the rest of the massive structure. It had no signs of course, which had explained the difficult of finding it. The Gate itself was not the typical silver plating only a bit taller than Void - instead, it was a bizarrely shaped, cylindrical opening half Void's height. It was still, however, attached to the gray Autobot Base looming over him. It was far beyond any level of retinal detection as it seemed to extend beyond ordinary vision. Perhaps it was just the lack of light, or perhaps the Base was as impregnable a fortress as he had always imagined it to be.

With a casual movement of his head, Void saw the vague outline of Gate Two another forty paces at least (if not more) to his left. It possessed a sign, but the "Two" flickered pathetically as it obviously suffered to power itself with so little Energon as fuel. The familiar silver plating could be seen, in sharp contrast to the more organic Gate in front of him.

Void retracted his wings into his back, stepping on his left foot in pursuit of that weakly shimmering "Two".

* * *

Every so often in such a strange Galaxy, a rare cosmic event would take place. This cosmic event was nowhere near as dramatic nor moving as its many witnesses often testified it to be, but it did provide a relatively entertaining light show for all local inhabitants to see.

Every so often, a small piece of asteroid, presumably the left-over scrap from a failed supernova or perhaps a star implosion, would drift carelessly into Cybertron's orbit. Cybertron's immense atmospheric pressure, coupled with strong electromagnetic forces, react rudely to the intruder. Scorched from the immense heat and pressurized into a much smaller object, the magnetized asteroid chunk would be flung away from Cybertron and land squarely into the presence of a much larger asteroid seemingly revolving around the metallic planet. This larger asteroid possessed no mercy towards the invader, so the poor rock would be gradually stretched apart by gravitational tidal forces, and eventually heated to a point of fantastical radiance before being partitioned rather explosively (although uniformly) throughout the larger asteroid's sky.

To many inhabitants of the asteroid, it was an amazing occasion than demanded robots to come out of their meager, rotting abodes and marvel at the illuminating sight.

To Megatron, it was a cause of immense annoyance as he was nonchalantly shrugged aside, pushed down, and overall physically violated as he found himself tragically caught (once again) in the midst of a very, very, _very _stupid crowd.

"Look at that!"

"Come here Lugnut, look how shiny it is!"

"Blitzwing you owe me a barrel now! Told you it was brilliant!"

"By Primus, is it actually getting brighter right now?"

"I can't even fathom what it's doing right now!"

_Idiot_, Megatron reflected. _Of course you can fathom it_. _We're an advanced, sentient species for Primus' sake. _

It was not so much the incredible idiocy of the bots clogging his space that truly bothered Megatron, but it was more so the amount of time he had wasted trying to navigate through this thick crowd. Thanks to the Asteroid's gracefully uneven surface, combined with the irregular structure composed of random mineral spires poking through, Megatron could gauge neither space nor texture. It was very much akin to being trapped in the middle of an extremely disgusting virus particle, with a circular, relatively neat exterior belying the unorganized spurts of erratic pillars and all types of lazy construction. More disturbingly, he seemed to be endlessly stuck in a hideous cycle of getting knocked to the ground, then being slapped back up by some buffoon's elbow sprocket. And so he sat like a macabre pendulum, systematically battered back and forth by powers he never even knew existed.

He saw an opening. Just dodging the nearest elbow sprocket aimed for his face, Megatron hopped over a small Decepticon jumping up and down to try and get a good look at the asteroid being split apart. The crowd was weaker in this sector, apparently comprised of mostly like-minded individuals much like Megatron himself, who were either tricked into coming here by someone else or came simply to poke fun at the more naive members. Regardless, they were not nearly as uncaring, and promptly gyrated out of Megatron's path as he gradually moved away from the larger crowd, first delving into small streams of branching bots, then only one or two, then none at all. The meaningless cacophony of noise the bots were making were slowly dying off, replaced by a fuzzy popping noise as the light show above Megatron's head continued. Judging from his previous experiences, he would have approximately two more cycles of unadulterated isolation. Then, the boorish masses would fill the asteroid once more and soak it in their refined stench, invoking his compulsory rancor.

_I have such a way with words_, Megatron speculated.

If he were true to himself, he was not nearly as cynical as his thoughts would have lead him to believe. In truth, he was actually much more dispirited from the context of the situation he was in – not so much the situation itself, even if it _did_ irk him.

He had absolutely no complete memory of what had transpired after Dreadwing had nearly terminated him. He still found it confusing that he was still _online_.

He frowned.

If Starscream really was as ruthless as he had always envisioned him to be, then he might have somehow infiltrated his memory core and procured the location of the ships. He had lied of course, but Starscream had openly announced and had willingly commanded Dreadwing to beat Megatron to the brink of near-termination before hand. He obviously detected Megatron's deceit, but the fact that the latter was still online was troubling.

He was now a good distance away from the jumbled masses. There were scarce remnants of Decepticons, but these were usually just homeless bots in cyclic begging lives rather than fully-fledged Transformers. They did not bother him, and neither did the light show anymore. The terrain, even as he struggled to focus all his anger on the flying pillars of brown rock upholding sloping mineral ceilings, remained as desolate as ever. His residence, fortunately, was well within walking distance – even though his specific "home" remained quite brutally segregated from the rest of the bundle of houses.

In fact, it was sadly positioned just above an elegantly curved cave to his right. Box-shaped, drab but steadfastly resilient, the porous surface breathed age and determination.

He was surrounded by networks of random brown intrusions, but his residency was more of a separate, rigid structure than anything else. It was a pleasing contrast to the chaos, but also an incredible comment on the personalities of its' inhabitants.

He tapped the front door, _his _front door, knocking the rusted metal with a reminiscent poignancy.

"Yes?"

The voice that answered was undeniably cautious, trained, and utterly objective.

"I'm sorry."

A pause. He had briefly hoped, maybe even _wished_, that the silence would last longer, but let go of this fantasy as soon as the terse reply came back.

"Come in. _Now_."

The swiveling of rough metal could be heard as empty space erupted in front of Megatron's vision, as he stepped over the slight step leading into the structure, internalizing the repetitive click as the "door" was thrust back into the closed position. Most of his possessions were not touched, and the remains of the failed plasma cannon lay lazily on the floor. Nothing was being synthesized, nor was the house clean. It was considerably larger than Starscream's organism-infested hovel, but still only possessed one large space, which was sectioned into multiple archways leading into private chambers.

"I asked for you," the feminine voice rang out behind him, who still refused to turn around. "I went around in guilt."

"I have more of it," Megatron retorted, turning around to see Xenon, comfortingly at ease yet completely cold by normal standards. "I should not have - "

"I already forgot about it."

The light show was apparently intensifying outside, as even of the few half-recharging Decepticons littering the rock formations surrounding their area woke up to let out drunken slurs of praise.

"What?" Megatron questioned, feeling a particularly painful throb as the motor at the back of his cranium continued to grind against the casing. "But – OW FUCK!"

To add to the pain in his head, his right arm was now pulsing with intense but comparatively smaller spurts of discomfort. He gingerly pressed down on the bruised armor with three fingers, twitching a little as Xenon proceeded to stand closer to his chest and hold up her fist into his face.

"Next time," she warned, wagging her closed fist dangerously at him. "This goes up your ass.

Megatron continued to rub at the injured plating, but noted several things about Xenon that he could either deduce or simply observe. Judging from her somewhat sluggish eye movements, she had not had a pleasant recharging cycle, and the erratic fidgeting her left knee gave off meant that she had been exerting herself quite a bit... far beyond the normal level that he would have usually allowed. This was complicated even further as he forced himself to calculate the distance from here to the bar, to Starscream's, then back. It was an agonizing computation, one constantly dramatized by the physical evidence present in front of him. And so she stood there, eyes resolutely penetrating into Megatron's processor, sparking a peculiar, shame-filled heat that run down his spinal blocks.

"I'm sorry," he stated again uselessly.

She leaned in, wrapping her wonderful, warm, delicate arms around his neck and pulling him in close. She had to tip-toe, but this allowed his head to rest pacified on her left shoulder. He knew his greater weight was surely putting pressure on her already sore knee, but she did not seem to mind. And neither did he.

"I – I - "

"Hush," she implored of him, resting her head likewise against the back of his heavy head. "Go synthesize some Energon for me."

She at once released her grip, allowing him to stand up straight from his awkward bent over position. She also instinctively shook her left leg, frowning as the audible rattle of loose gears and chains boiled beneath the thin exterior. His weight had somewhat damaged it, as a small chip now poked out of the knee, injuring the previously perfect green paint job. It was not of course, a simple green – it was a conglomeration of greens, a mixing of beautiful and bountiful greenery, as though the disgusting organic materials Megatron once despised had transformed into something far beyond any emotion he could have pretended to have.

"You're such a fatass," she remarked, running her hand smoothly across his shoulders as she jaunted into a away from him.

He smiled. The light show was finally beginning to lose its authority, as small sub-crowds of Decepticons ran wildly outside, their loud footsteps breaking through the thin walls with minimal effort. He was unsure of why most of them had chosen to break off now, considering that from what he could make out through the crude holes punched into the brown walls, the asteroid was nowhere near complete disintegration.

Megatron briskly jumped over to the left most segment of the room, grabbing a nearby chain net and slapping it roughly against the hole. He bent the top most corner of the chains and drove it into the edge of the wall leading to the hole, suspending the chain net in mid air. To this relief, the noise flustering outside dropped below noticeable levels, and the temperature inside increased. He proceeded to do the same for the other holes before walking into a private chamber to his left and sitting down onto his recharging station. He had no need for recharging however, so he chose to perpetually wait here until Xenon would find something for him to do, or worse, ask him questions.

_Lucky_, he thought.

He was not expecting such a subdued reaction to his sudden reappearance. He knew that she observed the scuff marks and bruises on his exterior, courtesy of Dreadwing, but clearly chose to say nothing about it. However, he had chosen as well to not inquire about how _she _was, but this was rather redundant as he knew exactly her well-being at this moment.

The sounds of synthesis rang out wildly from the neighboring chamber, and the brief aroma of chemically-treated Energon wafted into his station.

He wondered glumly what to do with the ships' location. Surely he was endangering Xenon by staying here, making her stand in the way of Starscream and that savage, stupid bot he carried around with him. Leaving her however would be equally irresponsible, as she would have no warning as to whether she could be taken as a hostage, or worse, a trade deal. Telling her was counter-intuitive of course, as he needed to first actualize whether to submit to Starscream and yield the locations or keep running until one of them spontaneously went offline.

"Do you want one or two?" the voice again burst out from the neighboring chamber.

He mused over the choice briefly before adding a third: "Three. And I thought I was synthesizing today?"

A quick little laugh, as ephemeral as it was punctual, then followed: "I don't want you to blow up the house." And with a brief pause, she added: "You won't finish three by the way."

He turned back his focus onto Starscream. If he would merely take his three cups, down them quickly, then excuse himself to leave under the pretext of scouting more ships... that would, ideally work. It was a necessary duty that he always left for, and the timing in this instance was perfect. He knew for a fact that Starscream could do nothing to him on the way there, but when he reached the caves... that would be a different matter. Ships or not, he would be swarmed by his cronies in no time and in all likeliness, terminated with extreme prejudice.

The problem again became bothersome. Both of _them _had the perfect opportunity yesterday to scan his memory core and extract the information, terminating him afterwards. Had they scanned and found nothing? That was surely impossible...

Fear was building inside him. Megatron ran a quick mental scan, parsing through information stored deep within, protected by his consciousness and kept secret from outside influence. Yes, the locations were still there... in fact, they hadn't been touched at all. There were no access logs, no back ups created, not even a history available...

It was immensely frustrating for him to understand this. He had been spared for absolutely no reason.

"Here."

_Focus_, Megatron urged himself. He looked up to see the expectant three cups, floating for a moment, before realizing Xenon had carefully stacked them on top of each other.

"Thank you," he whispered, taking the amusingly stacked containers and placing them onto the floor. He grabbed the top one and shook it for a while, tilting it into his open mouth with relish as a small portion of him began to recover. "It's good."

She laughed. "It's _always _good."

A little bit after he had finished sipping, she tip-toed over the still stacked two cups and sat down next to him on the recharging station. He adjusted his elbow flexor, unknowingly preventing her from sitting comfortably before it was slapped away by her torso. He bent forward over the station, swinging his dangling legs idly and trying to curl up into a ball.

"Sorry for calling you that," she stated, resolute to not see him face-to-face. "I won't do that again. I know how much - "

He was confused for perhaps several moments before quickly understanding: "Ah. Yes. Never mind about that."

"I didn't know it would turn your gears so much..."

He was not aware of that either. In retrospect nothing seemed overtly offensive, perhaps just vaguely painful from hearing the old name, but nothing inside Megatron jumped in powerful hysterics and desperately attempted to persuade him to become angry. It was more of a fleeting, brief burst of emotion more than anything else. At least, that is what he chose to assure himself with.

"I have to go for hunting ships soon," Megatron sadly mentioned, now taking his turn to look away from her whilst taking another cup into his mouth.

She coughed as the dust accumulated too much. "You can't get out of it?"

He had already lied once, so why not add another? "Unfortunately no. Wish I could."

_That makes three_, he analyzed.

"Just stay here with me," she implored, resting her head against his massive arm. She seemed to be almost... "I don't need a station to recharge."

She looked into his stony dark retinas, capturing their unwavering attention for what seemed like stellar cycles on end. The two retinas tracked her slight bobbing, following her every motion with a nostalgic tastefulness.

"That isn't my decision," he mumbled, softly enough so she would not hear it but failing as she leaned in more.

Xenon closed her eyes, humming idly. "Make it yours then."

For a while, he felt two polarizing sentiments. One feeling, instinctual and persuasive, pushed him to quickly escape from her mental grip and burst out the door, far away from her and a considerable distance away from the Asteroid itself. _It would be so _easy, he thought. Before he she could react, even say anything logical to derail his intentions... he would be out the door. And only after a megacycle, perhaps as soon as he set foot on the distant, ship-harboring asteroid, would he feel guilt. It would be terrible then, but at least he would be comforted by the fact that he was not here. Another emotion, weak and fleeting, gently told him to remain there in perfect harmony, eventually lying down on the recharging station until the flow of energy would envelop his head – then absolutely nothing. He could rest. He could truly recharge. He could lay down for stellar cycles at a time, spending his time drifting through his own processor, searching for lost memories and broken hopes. He could have solace. And even when the door eventually would break down, those two would come rushing in... he would be far beyond their control. He would have spent his last, physical moments in nostalgia, in wistful remembrance, in a realm of existence he knew neither Starscream nor Dreadwing could touch.

He would be free.

"I'll do it next time," he interrupted, bobbing his shoulder up and down to rouse her. "I promise."

She earnestly wanted to say something. Her hesitance was written all over her face, but she could not bear to endure the same context. Not again.

"I sometimes wonder," she threw out, hopping off the recharging station and turning away from him. "If that human concept of _deja vu_..." She turned around, staring straight at him once more. "...is real."

He similarly got off he station, positioning his head strategically downward so he could avoid eye contact. "Is it?"

She blinked twice, smiling sadly as she drooped down to pick up the still untouched third cup. "Oh yes," she affirmed. "Very much so."

Too much. It would be psychological suicide for him to stay here any longer. Megatron traipsed just to her side, striding out of the archway before heading for the bolted door in front of him. A small portion of his hard drive hoped, maybe even wished, that he would hear footsteps behind him. Yet no footsteps were heard, no noises were given, and worst of all... the light show had fully ended. There were no more pieces.

He pulled open the bolt propping the door, yanking it open before softly bringing it in after him. The _click _arrived as soon as he walked out, greeted by massive bursts of white, illuminating power.

Megatron was fast disappearing from the house. The actual fact that it was now completely bright was startling – his retinas did not receive the proper time needed to acclimate, and he neither knew where to find Starscream nor Dreadwing. He could always try the bar again, of course, but that would distract him rather than focus him. Additionally, Dreadwing would be truly a moron to show his armor plating at the same place that he was; considering Starscream's firm hold over him, and likely displeasure with discovering that Dreadwing was occupying a bar, ruled out the possibility that Megatron would find the pair in any of the old locations he was so used to. He had hoped the light show would draw at least one of their cronies, but for the most part they operated alone with minimal accomplices who seldom stayed on Starscream's service for too long. Far more likely, and indeed more logical, would be that he would be _found_ rather than _finding _them.

Just apart from the crags surrounding his abode, there existed a series of cliffs set much farther apart on the Asteroid from the rest of the populace. This series of miniature mountains openly despised all intruders, taking at least seventeen sparks within the last stellar cycle alone. It was nothing like the powerful, organic macrocosms surround him – it was much more akin to a disease-ridden parasite, furiously infecting and leeching the blood off its host. In a sea of perfect, randomly elevated brown madness, there existed only one white, massive host of hills protruding disgustingly from the sides of their brown brothers: a revolting change of color.

"Glad you came."

He would have to be very still now. Judging from the coldness in the voice, the sore tiredness that came from above him, any sudden move would be treated as cold contempt and probably subject him to all sorts of horrible, _terrible _things.

"Come down," Megatron commanded, still refusing to move his gaze to the top of the penultimate peak of the series of mountains.

"Why don't you come up?"

Not moving his retinas upward was both counter intuitive and illogical, as he could not sufficiently find a good argument to combat the request of the upper voice.

"Never mind."

He did not have to move his retinas upward anymore. As he stared straight in front of him, admiring the hard ice crystallizing on the edges of the parasitic series of mountains, a dual-winged, purple Transformer appeared to block his view, landing on the brittle ground forcefully as the frail stone cracked beneath the pronged feet. The bot adjusted his posture to appear as tall as possible, sticking out his silver-rimmed, triangular chest much to Megatron's exasperation. More disquieting than that, a sudden, although entirely subdued and much less flash _thud_ came from behind him, and even though he was not currently facing it, he could intuitively tell that the weight was heavier. _Much _heavier.

"I'd expect you're a bit confused right about now," Starscream silently spoke, walking over to Megatron and examining his head with careful interest. "Personally, I would have checked my head first."

"I did," Megatron spat, seething with pent-up frustration. "I scanned again and again and..."

"Nothing, right?" Starscream finished for him. "Yes... that was very, _very _funny."

Megatron frowned in his best expression of deepest loathing, walking closer to Starscream in overconfident arrogance. The loud _thud _could be heard again behind him as it moved closer to him. He ignored this completely, lost in his blind rage against the frustrating form in front of him. He cocked his head sideways, daring Starscream to come any closer.

"I'll go offline right here," Megatron smiled. "I am not afraid of termination. Especially not by the likes of you."

"I don't care about you," Starscream retorted, pushing Megatron back. To the latter's suppressed spurt of fear, the _thud _came closer. "If you don't want to give it, that's up to you."

Megatron turned around, staring at Dreadwing straight in the eye as his repeated _thuds_ grew even more powerful. The lumbering behemoth was not exactly moving, but he was more likely stumbling around his feet in the pursuit of scaring Megatron. As crude, stupid, and overall senseless the plan was – it seemed to be working.

"End me right now. Do it." Megatron mentioned softly.

"Why?" Starscream questioned, moving away from Megatron to sit himself down on a flat shard of white rock. "So we can leave your bot the fuck alone?"

"I don't care about her," Megatron admitted, hating himself for it but at the same time, mulling over the exact wording.

"No..." Starscream replied. "Obvious. Who gives a shit about anyone anymore? You start doing that in these _times_, and you end up offline. Right?"

Megatron remained silent, keeping a sensor on Dreadwing's still idle left hand, waiting for it to replace with a spiked metal ball.

"Do you believe that?" Starscream asked, moving closer once more to Megatron to stare at his back.

"No."

"Then why are you still here?"

Megatron waited for a while. The spiked ball was not extending any time soon, and according to the dismal display that Dreadwing was putting on, the huge Decepticon had no intention of unleashing it any time soon. In fact, his posture was quite relaxed, laid-back even, almost entirely bored by the proceedings and simply droning himself to recharge. Megatron would have accepted this odd behavior before, if he did not have such a terrible experience previously with the two.

"Come then," Starscream yelled as he walked away, preparing his wings by allowing the propellers to jut out of the back plating. "Let's go try to find some ships."

"Stop fucking around," Megatron whispered, carefully controlling any sudden movements. "Let's hash this out."

Starscream laughed, deactivating the propulsion. "Hash what out?"

"You know what you did to me," Megatron rather abruptly broke in, grabbing the barely smaller Transformer by the right wing, trying to crush it within his grasp. "You _know _what happened last night."

"I seem to remember that I tried to extract some information from you," Starscream offered, whipping around and shoving the hand off him. "But you didn't give it."

"So you're just stopping?"

Starscream rubbed at his eye covers, shifting around uneasily on his feet.

"What's the point of doing anything more?"

Megatron walked closer, again closing the gap between him and Starscream. "That's it then, is it?"

Starscream smiled, flashing his sharp yellow canines. "Is it?"

Without another question, Megatron stepped away from Starscream, extending his wings as well. After hearing the same, two identical noises behind him, he blasted off.

Still inside the house, Xenon resumed her position back on the hard recharging station, twiddling the cup beneath her thumb digits. She looked at the fluid vaguely, visualizing imaginary ripples appearing as the Energon rocked back and forth in a soothing manner.

"Told you so," she murmured.

* * *

**A/N (see update section first)**

_**Yep! Moving to a new format with much longer chapters... I've set my goal to about a million words, mainly because 1) It is a cool number. 2) The length will be fantastic for overall story development.**_

_**Nothing much to tell anymore... I've formulated the overall structure of the story, and fleshed out ideas for all the characters... Keep in mind, the story will only get more complex as things progress so don't be afraid to refer back to previous chapters! One of the things about a fictional "universe" (if done right) is that like an actual universe, it has long, recurrent themes, motifs, etc. Besides, reading is fun!**_

_**I hope new Transformers films take a more realistic, darkly dramatic, allegorical approach. Let the hopes and dreams continue.**_

_**And as always, R/R and enjoy!**_

_**~Frax**_

**Update: Yes, I'm not offline! It's been quite a busy life, but I assure you the series is not over! It was merely on a brief hiatus... anyways, 8 days until the new chapter comes out!**


	6. Intricacies (Part I)

"That was rather cruel of you."

"Shut up."

Megatron, as much as he had endeavored to firmly ignore any of Starscream's blabbering, found it exceptionally difficult to do so as the latter kept pushing seemingly benign yet disgusting whispers in his ears. These greatly annoyed him.

"Suit yourself," Starscream relinquished. "I just thought talking would ease the burden."

Megatron spun about rather violently in the misty darkness, unafraid of the lumbering bot behind Starscream fidgeting slightly. He stared straight into the red retinas and made the utmost effort to appear as plain and threatening as possible.

"I dislike you," Megatron boldly proclaimed, again ignoring the massive twitching behind his former second-in-command. "I would go so far as to say I _loathe _you."

Starscream snickered defiantly. "_Ok. _So?"

Megatron was taken aback by the reply, unsure of where to proceed next.

"I don't give a scrap about your feelings for me," Starscream urged, moving confidently towards Megatron. "_I _would go so far as to say I don't give a _shit _either."

Megatron found this immensely off-putting, but grudgingly, inwardly thanked Starscream for his exceptional openness. He would much rather prefer the terse insults spewn by this Starscream than the wistful, subverted monologues of the old Starscream. At long last, they could express their mutual hatred in an amicable way.

"It's been two megacycles," Megatron complained. "We have been scouring this rotten place, boulder by boulder, piece by piece - "

"Yes yes," Dreadwing suddenly broke out, stepping in front of both Decepticons and wandering idly away into spurts of misty whiteness. "Look, even my armor is beginning to age because of the enormous wait."

Megatron noted that Dreadwing's usual red and black hues were indeed fading, although that was certainly for an entirely different reason.

"I didn't know you could exhibit sarcasm Dreadwing," Starscream joked, also moving away from Megatron to squint his optics at the seemingly unreachable, inky blackness extending away from them in all directions. "This asteroid belt really is barren."

"I don't understand this," Megatron stated bluntly. "I tell you I saw no ships. You refuse to believe me. You coerce me to join you on this pointless scouting. You become surprised that we can't find anything."

"WE NEED THOSE SHIPS!"

Dreadwing nearly tumbled from the unexpected roar coming from behind him, yet Megatron was far more interested in the emotions corrupting the message, the sentimentality clouding the delivery, and the brutal harshness tinging the surface of communication.

Starscream straightened himself, cracking a few rust pockets in the nooks of his silver neck. "It's the only way, it's the only way... oh Primus..."

"This all seems a bit pathetic Starscream," Megatron announced, loud enough for Dreadwing to promptly become angered. "Even for you."

"We've tried to solve this without shedding Energon," Starscream replied. "But no more." He stood up and began a slow, deliberate pace towards Megatron.

"You will not be the enemy of progress Megatron," Dreadwing agreed, also unsheathing his twin blades, stained with dark spurts of blueish purple liquid.

"The Decepticons are getting off _that _miserable place - " Dreadwing pointed to a far away black sphere, revolving around an even larger gray, irregular sphere. " - with, or without you."

Megatron took a moment to weigh his options, glancing around rapidly as the two bots continued marching towards him.

"That's what's going to happen?" he questioned, despite the lack of response from the other two.

_March_.

"You're going to cut me down right here? Terminate me away from my own home?"

_Thud. _

"You never wanted the ships' location... you just wanted me offline."

_March. _

"Too bad you both didn't have the bearings to do it in front of my home."

Starscream was the first to lunge forward, while Dreadwing's considerably larger frame was beginning to ready a massive strike. Megatron sidestepped away from the lunging figure, swiftly gyrating on the balls of his feet before grabbing Starscream's windpipe and crushing it against his forearm flexor. Acting quickly, he deployed his fusion cannon, extending it's murderous tip right near the edge of Starscream's helm. At once, the bot's struggling had ceased, resistance now kept to a minimum as he jagged but still fully functional weapon viciously prodded against his audio receptor.

"Don't move!" Megatron called out to the paused Dreadwing. "Or else I'll blow his lousy processors out."

"Threats are highly unbecoming of you Megatron," Dreadwing expressed, genuine surprise speading through his stony features. "Been a long cycle since I saw _that _being used."

"Except..." Starscram choked out, seeming much more worried about the arm rather than the cannon. "We've seen your home."

_Fuck_, Megatron inwardly reflected.

"Get this idiot off me Dreadwing," Starscream commanded, suddenly putting up an enormous fight against the arm holding him captive. Dreadwing, never one to disobey orders, advanced gradually towards Megatron, relishing every step. Almost _savoring _them.

"Don't come any closer!" Megatron desperately tried. "Don't or else I'll terminate him right here and now!"

"The organics," Dreadwing finished his tread. "would say you have an _abysmal _poker face."

_Smash._

The pain was as quick as it was brutal. Although the actual blade itself never made contact with Megatron's face, the hilt had been jammed straight forward into his helm, making him stumble backwards, unintentionally releasing his grip on the struggling Starscream. Megatron fell back painfully, the angle of the fall sending a kinetic shockwave to his already dented helm, as he lay there in silence, awaiting the next moments.

"You're an idiot," Starscream reprimanded, pressing his face into Megatron's space. "We saw parts still scattered in your home."

Megatron recoiled sharply as another kick from Dreadwing threatened to puncture his spark chamber.

"You tried fixing it, didn't you?"

"I almost did," Megatron refused, vaguely still trying to activate what he knew was a non-functional fusion cannon. "I probably can. I'll terminate you with it."

"The ships are the Decepticons' only way of surviving Cybertron's atmosphere," Starscream rang out. "You tortured the whole lot of us when you started to slowly build up anticipation for your stupid plans, and then – you admit that you have no plans."

"We can find another way..."

_Krisk._

Although he had his fair share of incredibly painful injuries, this particular stab was aimed at perhaps the most sensitive and furtive node in his chassis, firmly squinted and deliberately hidden away as to not arouse suspicion. Regardless, a deep, resounding ripping could be detected as the blade stuffed its icy way past the tender sensors, barely missing Megatron's central processor.

"NOOOO... please... AAHHHHH!"

It was too late. The shell of the fragile structure was now torn in half by the divisive blade, the input signal lost, the casing of the entire thing fractured beyond repair.

"I can't see! I can't see!"

"Actually," Starscream quietly amended, "you still have another functioning one. We might as well take care of that as we - "

Abruptly the cutting force residing in his left optic left. It was torn out, further burning the now degenerate sensors even more, but still the overall lump of discomfort was leaving him...

...and soon replaced by an even larger apprehension. Megatron sat up.

Dreadwing and Starscream stood on either side of him, both fixated on the peculiar lack of black fog in front. Instead, a more voluptuous, cohesive shape began spreading and mixing within the darkness. This particular shape had a thick, gelatinous texture as smooth as it was evenly spread. The oval itself had a bright red tinge to it, unintentionally blending with the surrounding fog to create crimson spurts of light beams. And on the sides of the expeditiously widening, rose-colored oval, there lay borders of incredible heat - fiery as they were golden.

"Slag, slag, slag..."

But Megatron needed no affirmations. As both bots to his left ceased moving, he sprinted away from the widening oval, leaping up and hurriedly transforming before accelerating past the darkness. He soon heard two propulsion systems briskly catch up behind him.

"Keep going!"

Starscream had clearly meant this more for Dreadwing, but that could not explain the incredibly agony that was vocalized a few nanocycles later. The instinctive yelp that was uttered was soft yet loud at the same time, of exceptional clarity yet disquiet... the widening, heated oval had slowly wrapped itself around Dreadwing's feet. The vocalization that resulted started off immensely strong, before gradually dying down and becoming quiet once again, almost as if the cry had stopped mid-processing. Megatron perceived the expected lack of footsteps behind him.

_Srich. _

The floor was breaking up beneath him. The magma was already building up beneath, and was systematically mangling the feeble mineral ground, with huge lacerations spawning in the rock floor in front of him. Amorphous spires of pure liquid death shot up in front of him, Megatron barely managing to avoid them as fought to fly higher and higher. He could not fly in the same direction or a stream of lava would take him down; nor could he stay close to the ground as it was merely clicks away from the actual source of the tall shoots of heated liquid. The only solution, it seems, was to keep moving and jolting past randomly appearing pillars of flaming death.

It did not help that no matter how long he zoomed across and above the barren wasteland, the darkness did not let up its influence; the heavy atmosphere, indeed was truly beginning to weigh him down. He frittered a bit, thinking of all the irregular rock formations that could suddenly sprout in front of his pathetic field of vision, and then send him plunging into a torrid, unpleasant end. He needed at least four more nanocycles to reach escape velocity, but was fully aware that the mountains of magma had already seared through part of his left wing, and were persistently moving their aims closer.

"Megatron, over here!"

Although he hated himself for doing so, Megatron clumsily flipped around until he could see the dim but definitely alive outline of Starscream, thrusting forward with seemingly no distress, somehow caught in the eye of the storm – in the perfect center of an eternal loop of dancing fire.

"AHHH!"

He had been too careless. A bullet of lava had strayed too close to his underbelly, brandishing its hot whip over the exposed surface. He had lost some sensory feelings then and there, but tried to remain focused on Starscream.

He could not make that. Starscream was surrounded by towers of flame, none of which seemed to be providing an opening to fly through. The brief pockets of resurgence that were granted lasted only about a tenth of a nanocycle, before firing up once more.

_Damn it._

With a suicidal barrel roll, Megatron simultaneously shifted his propulsion sideways while spinning as fast as he could, timing it with a brief hope that the window of time would be on his side. And as the opening appeared, he propelled with even more force...

_Slurch. Slick. Snarch._

"Gruph..."

Starscream cordially moved slightly more to the left to create space, but Megatron's timing was clearly off by a fifth of a nanocycle, just late enough as the spire of cruel magma shot up once more and blistered itself across his entire chassis. Not only had he sustained severe burns, but also his secondary propulsion engine had been blown off, thrown away by the heat and the miniature explosion that occurred – _while still attached to its progenitor –_ had desensitized most of the lower half of his chassis, a feat Megatron knew would bite him later on.

What followed now, was a complete and utter lack of noise.

Megatron subconsciously squinted back at Starscream, who looked satisfyingly behind him as the molten planet continued to erupt and storm, although the size was gradually fading away and the outline blurring the more he propelled away.

Thinking quickly, Megatron spotted an asteroid floating lazily in front of them, oblivious to its parent's fury as it drifted carelessly through the cosmic orbit. It was rather large, and a perfect place to stop and notate the damage. He landed squarely on his feet, ironically the only place that had not been affected. The pain, however, still resounded as the shockwave of sudden landing fired up waves of agony into the burned circuits.

"Oh slag... oh scrap..."

Megatron glumly watched Starscream land beside him, proudly advertising his lack of injuries.

"Why, why, why..."

"So," Starscream attempted, "the ships clearly are not a plan anymore. What next?"

"You, you..."

"Megatron, I'm afraid I can't quite understand what you're saying. Could you speak more loudly?"

He was in no fit position for the action he was about to take, but he did it anyway. Unsheathing a sharp piece of rock lying next to him, he jabbed it strongly into Starscream's midsection, standing up while trying to ignore the signals from his chassis to lay back down.

"You, you... manipulative _waste,_" Megatron spat. "How dare you?"

"I saved you, you fool," Starscream reconciled, unable to move without a firm thrust from Megatron's improvised weapon. "At least drop this garbage and fight fair, without any stealthy drawing."

"You _never _fight fair," Megatron whispered. "And I refuse to play by your games."

Starscream raucously howled. "What _games_? Just because I change my opinion every once in a while about your usefulness..."

_Thkrist._

"Oh..."

Megatron found Starscream's acknowledgment highly boring, and thus pushed the rock in even more.

"Primus..."

"Oh," Megatron muttered in Starscream's audio. "He won't save you now. Not even your personal _bitch _can save you now. He couldn't even save himself."

Megatron noted with a relish as Starscream was losing Energon quite quickly. The puncture wound was both large enough to leak Energon rapidly while also deep enough to damage crucial wires and system mainframes. He left it embedded within the drizzling Decepticon and kicked him to the ground. Starscream remained motionless, unable to swing his arms in rebellion as the shard has clearly been plunged further inward with the fall and the kick.

Megatron bent down to the purple bot's eye level, who was still sputtering Energon profusely from his mouth.

"Starscream," he slurred, tapping the namesake's head. "Thank you for allowing me to _spend the night_."

Starscream struggled against the pressure as Megatron's hand moved to the shard.

"... allow me to return the favor. You can spend your life here."

_Crushzt. _

He did not wait to see Starscream's expression. With a satisfied aside to himself, he noted that the ships were finally in good hands. There were no more rivals. No more more opponents to progress. A brief _squelching _noise was made behind him.

"Disgusting," he declared, without turning around.

**. . .**

"Move."

She actually was waiting for quite a while, and had resolved to be much more quiet about her future protestations, but Slipstream was not only ignoring all her movements but also seemingly lost in thought and thus, blocking the rest of the traffic.

"Get the fuck outta the stool!"

This was not her. Another bar patron, possessing spiked shoulders and a wide chest frame, smacked the others away as the brutal form of Shockwave cut through the crowd. He addressed the lanky, lean Slipstream.

"You have been on the stool for nearly two hours. Show some courtesy and move off the stool."

"Fuck you. And thanks for the warning Crasher."

Crasher face-palmed, tilting her head downward to avoid what was to become. Shockwave however, did not perform as expected; instead, he merely hoisted the tall fembot off the stool and threw her away from him. Evidently he had not given it his all; she only floated for nearly two nanocycles before crumpling onto the floor where the crowd had energetically parted apart to let Slipstream slap her body against the hard mineral ground. Crasher took the opening opportunistically, seizing Slipstream by the elbows and pulled her to a standing position. Although the two fembots were close to equal height, Slipstream's narrower joints were difficult to hold firmly without injuring.

"Sit," Crasher commanded, motioning towards an empty table a bit away from the thick, all-consuming crowd. "You'll feel better."

"I felt something again," Slipstream announced, although Crasher spent the time simultaneously listening while finding another chair to push to the table. "I think he's injured."

"Why are you still so attached?" Crasher replied, tilting the table towards her so Slipstream would be forced to look at her in the optics. "I seem to remember you saying something else to me a stellar cycle ago."

"I separated, yeah," Slipstream continued. "Our sparks are officially separated."

She seemed to say this last line with a twinging regret, but Crasher chose to ignore as she normally did with Slipstream's new normal of continuous complaint.

"So?" Crasher tried again, more confused. In the vague distance, she could make out Shockwave laughing with the bartender. "You shouldn't be feeling anything anymore."

"I am though," Slipstream forged on. "I hate being a... _clone_."

"That's not nearly as dramatic as you're making it out to be."

Slipstream's optics narrowed, her twin brows furrowing in anger. "How dare you – you – trivialize my strugg - "

"It's not a struggle," Crasher interrupted flatly. "It's nothing. You hear me?" She leaned closer to Slipstream, again ignoring her increasing exasperation. "_Nothing_. A tenth of all Cybertronians are just clones. That many... and you're the only one who does this..."

"But, if Starscream is hurt..."

"You shouldn't care whether he is or not," Crasher cut her off. "Frankly I hate doing this..."

"What?" Slipstream mocked, "I thought you were my fri-"

"I hate you," Crasher stealthily whispered, "I _hate _the way you fucking make me sit and listen to your bitching." Crasher's anger was threatening to take over her rational side, but she ceased listening to that part long ago. "I don't want to hear it. None of it. None of your pity. None of your stupid crying. None of anything. Just... leave me alone."

Slipstream broke out into a fully extended burst of crying, earning Shockwave's silent reprisal from away in the same bar stool. Crasher abruptly got up, flexing her wings for a rotary test before frowning at the sobbing Slipstream.

"I can't stand being around losers."

"Wait!"

"No."

Slipstream rather angrily stood up, clamping onto Crasher's right wing with a ferocious determinism.

"Let go," Crasher spat, shaking Slipstream violently as a few of the bar patrons began to take notice. "Before I - "

"Before you what?" Slipstream mouthed, still holding onto the now dented wing tip. "Hm? I'll make the biggest scene in fuc - "

"Sit down," Crasher whispered, motioning to the seat she had vacated. Slipstream began to open her mouth. "Sit, sit, sit, SIT!"

Taken back by this (maybe) false show of rage, Slipstream quietly slunk back into the over-sized chair.

Crasher knelt down, waving away prospective patrons with a casual wave of her digits.

"You can't keep going on like this," she mouthed. "And why do you insist on dragging me down with you?"

"What you think you're totally independent?" Slipstream argued. "You think you get your own Energon? You think your home is because you laid down each layer?"

She moved her head closer to Crasher's audio. "You think you would react differently if you were me?"

"I - " Crasher carefully considered her next words. " - can't say. I'm not in your situation."

"Then don't pretend to understand it," Slipstream mentioned, still sitting uneasily in her chair.

"Ease up," Crasher advised, tilting her head towards the awkward positioning. "Processor and chassis."

"I didn't even want to come today," Slipstream fired back, afterwards sitting more comfortably. "The Energon here is so shitty."

"I've never had some," Crasher admitted. "This unprocessed stuff is bad for your spark they say."

"Fucking speculators," Slipstream blithely responded. "I'd bet Soundwave and his legion of so-called _scientists _have never taken a shot in their entire lives."

Shockwave was making a rather large scene, presumably having over-energized and now currently slashing away (with graceful apologies, no less) at the crowd humorously morphing around him. They stayed just outside of his flailing range, some staying back to observe while others moved onto the bar to obtain drinks.

"I've heard some other things too," Crasher noted. "_Speculations_," she added with a smirk.

"Hmph. If they could ever manage moving to Cybertron," Slipstream guffawed derisively, "I doubt they would be able to make peace with the Autobots."

"There's been talk that those terms are outdated," Crasher replied. "Obsolete."

"There's still _us _and _them _though," Slipstream brightened her optics, although this was out of vulnerability rather than curiosity. "Right?"

Crasher held her gaze for a few moments, seeing the soft blues click and dissipate as she began to verbalize:

"I'm not sure that's how it works anymore."

"Hmph," Slipstream resumed her usual string of non-optic contact. "Looks like you gave up already."

"I'm not giving up," Crasher insisted. "I'm looking ahead. And so are others."

Slipstream dodged a careless patron's elbow, drumming her digits idly on her knees while she scrunched her nose in annoyance.

"_Ok_," she began sarcastically. "Anyone of note?"

"I'm sure some of the Science Division are in on it," Crasher denoted, although this seemed to put off Slipstream more. "Probably their boss Soundwave too."

"He's _head _of Science," Slipstream corrected. "_Head_. Not boss. Heads can be ignored and stuffed away. Bosses have to be listened to."

"The majority," Crasher continued, seemingly oblivious to this cynical observation, "I am sure believe in the cause of moving back."

"The Science Division is fragmented anyway," Slipstream regarded. "Rumor has it that they're down to the last seventeen or so."

_Seventeen? _That had been much worse than she had even dreamed of, if she ever was capable of such a function. The fact that nearly all those names were unknown to the public worried her more. With Shockwave out of – commission – both literally and metaphorically, the others... Astrotrain, Cyclonus, even the reformatted Skywarp –

"The ones we all knew are gone," Slipstream ended. "The new names are just rumors and thoughts. For all we know, there might not even be a Division at all."

Crasher allowed herself a tiny, yet impetuous, fleeting smile, but Slipstream caught this too quickly: "Are you laughing at me?"

Crasher hastily diverted the attention. "No. Of course not. Sorry. I was just thinking about something concerning Starscream."

Slipstream visibly twinged, and although Crasher found herself congratulating herself on so deftly deflecting interest away from her by leveraging Starscream's fate, she knew it was a harsh, if not satisfying move.

"There are times where he would - "

"I'm getting a call," Crasher broke in. She stood up with a flurry. "Don't share the same fate as poor Shockwave there."

She gesticulated towards the large, purple bot away from her, still close to the bar but resolutely forcing conversation with the poor bartender, who must have certainly by now been planning to offline himself. Upon seeing this, Crasher was treated to a brief grin from Slipstream, who remained seated and simply waved her away, as though giving former permission to leave.

Crasher's first task was to head outside, which meant pushing through the incoming crowd and their usual dank, heavy atmosphere and reaching the dual silver doors, long-framed and imposing, situated thirty steps from her. Fortunately, most of the bots who clumsily teetered in were more interested in Shockwave's antics rather than her opposite movement. She observed – with a certain amount of reserved disgust – that most of the bots were indeed over-energized, despite the (presumable) fact that they _just _entered the bar.

_So Energon IS going to the black market, _she visualized. She finally pushed back the twin doors and let the basking sunlight of day strike her violently. Although she disliked the initial exposure, her optics gradually adjusted, narrowing and shrinking the iris to fit the massive change from thick, compressing claustrophobia to wide-open, freeing illumination.

Unexpectedly, a static chatter emerged from within her processor, traveling to the her audios. A silky-smooth, perfectly even, completely objective voice rang out.

"Address: Lieutenant Crasher. Message: Request for presence at subterranean division. Reasoning: Omega-9 Protocol in progress. Cybertron tenable..."

Crasher abruptly transformed, setting her destination coordinates clearly on her display for easier navigation of the asteroid's irregular geography.

"... Priority Level: Urgent."

Propelling forward with a viscous motion, Crasher cut through the various atmospheres of the asteroid. The dim, hazy fog that surrounded her departed, leaving the miniscule bar swimming in a midst of soft brown blankets.

* * *

**A/N**

**Greetings! I apologize for not updating in such an incredibly long amount of time, but life does have an annoying tendency to distract oneself... humor aside, I do promise to update more frequently, as technically the actual writing phase of one of these chapters take me about 2-3 weeks, not much more. (Again, as long as life does not interfere...)**

**You might have noted why there is only one perspective in this chapter. The other half of this chapter will also come out within the next week... I was planning on releasing a new chapter as soon as I finished the entire rough edit, but felt guilty about holding back updates for so long... Simply put, this is only half of the chapter soon to come. Check back for updates within this week, as I will later post the other half (Autobot) of this chapter.**

**A private note: keep in mind that this is a carefully arranged fictional universe, and thus, I make frequent references to past, present, and possibly future events. It's also a quite large work (maybe not now, but it will be soon, as updates roll in more frequently), so I'd advise a healthy amount of backlogging in case you missed something. I've always desired a mature, serious incarnation of the Transformers, without all the nuisances of human backstories (who cares? It's called _Transformers_. Not _Humans and Their Giant Metal Friends)._**

**It's all a highly inter-connected world, so feel free to peruse through previous chapters in case you need some more clarification.**

**So check back for the other half of this chapter within this week, apologies once again for the delays, and not to worry! From this point on, you should get a new chapter every 2 weeks, 3 at the absolute maximum, until otherwise noted.**

**Enjoy the reading!**

**P.S: I also promise my audience a certain lack of 'review-soliciting' bylines at the end of author's notes... I do this because I enjoy it! If you do review, favorite, follow, etc. I thank you, but don't feel pressured to do so. Those actions are OPTIONAL compliments you pay ME, not demands I will somehow mystically enforce upon you... besides, it would be a much better compliment to get an studio-produced, mature Transformers incarnation out there somewhere!**

_**Transformers News:**_

**Yes, we all know that TF: Prime was fantastic, but _Robots in Disguise (2015) should be good too! The concept of a struggling hero (much like Animated's Optimus) is certainly a fresh take on the usual protagonist. Bumblebee's story hopefully will all play out interestingly, as writing gets better..._** **_That animation style though... it's... different, to say the least._**

**MAJOR UPDATE COMING SOON! APOLOGIES FOR NOT UPDATING IN A LONG TIME! REGULARLY CHECK BACK!**


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